


The Demon of the Rose

by KarianDespri



Category: Original Work
Genre: Action, Comedy, Fantasy, Gen, Supernatural - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-29
Updated: 2014-11-18
Packaged: 2018-02-19 05:01:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 66,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2375564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KarianDespri/pseuds/KarianDespri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On his way to school, average, everyday nerd Tanis and his friend, Silvara, are abducted by a man named Sylar. Sylar turns out to be one of the remaining few from a powerful group that had been secretly coexisting in a parallel world to Earth. The situation is explained to them and they are given incredible gifts of supernatural power--Badges. Using these Badges, quick wits, dark mind games, and a lot of sarcasm, Tanis and his friend, as well as many other new recruits, are thrust head-first into a long-lasting war between two more of these groups of Badge Wielders, waging battle between The Realm, a pocket universe that is separated from time, and Earth, their home.</p><p>A/N: There is a character in this book, Alec Evening, who actually does not belong to me. He belongs to my friend Elizabeth Steele's "Silver Burns" saga. I have merely been given permission to include him as a primary character in my work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Explanations and Setting the Stage

I started, as all others, as a child. I grew into a teenager and became a student. I was a son. I was a brother. I was a friend. I was everything a kid my age should be. My family wasn’t very wealthy but we got by. I didn’t excel to honors in school—mainly because I didn’t care enough to—but I didn’t do poorly. I played a lot of video games and went out with my friends pretty often. I watched a decent amount of movies and shows. Everything was very normal. It was all quite boring, really, but I couldn’t bring myself to complain too much. After all, there were far worse positions I could have been in. Then, on the day before my birthday, two years ago, everything changed. I was a son. I was a brother. I was a friend. And now, I am a King.

I am Tanis Haven, and this is my story.

 

* * *

 

“Tanis! Get up! You're going to be late!” my mom yelled at me from downstairs, unaware that I had been up for the last hour trying to see if I could “sleep” long enough for her to let me skip school for the day.

_Oh, well. It was worth a shot._

            I guess I should introduce myself... My name is Tanis, as you just heard—Tanis Haven. I was just about to turn sixteen—the next day, in fact; it was January second. I went to an alright school, Sandford Secondary. It was pretty big, blue and white on the outside and on the inside. Seemed kind of like a jail sometimes. But you don’t really care about my school, do you? No, of course not, all you care about is me, right? I was around five-feet, eight-inches tall. I was a little overweight, but I was still healthy enough. I had straight, dark-brown hair that came down just halfway over my ears and my bangs loomed just over my eyes. I had hazel eyes with spurts of brown near the pupils and I was as pale as the moon. I think that's just about everything... Well—

            “Tanis! Hurry up! You miss school today and you're grounded!”

            “You can’t ground me on my birthday!” I called back down the stairs, indignantly.

            “Try me!” I could almost hear in her voice how her hands went to her hips.

            "Fuckin’..." I sighed. Being grounded was quite possibly the worst thing that could ever happen to me. Grounded meant no computer and no computer meant no connection to any of my friends. And if I was disconnected for longer than a couple days, I started to go stir crazy like you wouldn’t believe. Anyways, I dressed myself in slightly too-long black jeans and a purple t-shirt, with a red-and-black-checkered zip-up sweater thrown open overtop. Now, I know what you’re thinking. ‘An open hoodie is all you’re going to wear in January… in Canada?!’ Well, that actually probably wasn’t at all what you were thinking but I don’t care. This winter was turning out to be relatively warm, fortunately enough. And I had thick skin, so whatever. Anyways, after I got dressed, I started down the stairs.

            “Tanis! You better—”

            “I'm here, I'm here! Calm your tits...” I said with a shit-eating grin, as I ran down into the kitchen.

            “Watch your fucking language! I'll beat you!” she finished, pointing at me with a finger. She was wearing a grin of her own. Now, as you may or may not have noticed, my mom and I were more like bickering siblings than parent and child. We both enjoyed getting on each other’s nerves as much as possible and she especially enjoyed throwing around empty threats. Of course, she was about as dangerous as a well-fed gerbil. I think the only time my mom would ever have even _thought_ of hitting anybody was if they laid an unwanted hand on me or my brother. Oh, yeah, I have a little brother; his name's Alex; he's nine. But anyways, I was going to be late if I stuck around there any longer, so I grabbed the breakfast and lunch my mom made for me from the counter and headed toward the door.

            Peanut-butter-and-banana-sandwich in hand, I left to go to school. The walk to my school was about half an hour long but, thankfully, my friend Silvara—she preferred Vara—lived directly around the corner from my house. So, I always had someone to talk to on the way there. Now, you have to understand something... I was infatuated with this girl. It was actually kind of ridiculous. I'd known her since seventh grade and I had pretty well instantly garnered a crush for her that only progressed from there. I know; it’s cliché, but hey, clichés were made for a reason. Anyways, yeah, she’d be the main love interest if my life were a book or something.

            “There you are!” she yelled from across the street. As I was getting closer I noticed she was wearing her usual style of outfit. She had on a black t-shirt with some designs on it that were too complicated to bother attempting to explain—think tribal decals but with dragons—which she covered with her slightly puffy-looking, black jacket that had a fur-rimmed hood. A pair of dark, blue jeans that was just tight enough to make me glance down every now and again adorned her legs and a silver-spiked, black collar was around her neck, which complemented her long, straight, naturally silver hair. I’ll give you three guesses as to why her name was Silvara, and the first two guesses don’t count. She also wore a pair of bracelets that resembled her collar and she had a pair of black, fur-rimmed, boots.

            “Hey, Vara—” I had just made it across the street to her.

            Her bright green eyes had a kind of excited glint in them. “It feels like I've been waiting for hours!” She made a point of throwing her arms out to show me _just how long_ she’d been waiting. When she recomposed herself, she shot me quick grin.

            “Heh, sorry...” I scratched the back of my head sheepishly as I met her pace. “Stupid alarm wasn't working properly. I need to get a new one soon.” This was just an excuse, of course—one that she’d heard countless times. Of course, being forcefully sent to school by my mother meant I got to spend time with Silvara, so I wasn’t about to complain too much.

            She snorted. “You mean like yesterday? Or more like the day before?” She grinned again, chuckling. “Either your alarm is actually completely broken already, or you're just lying to me...” she said, raising her eyebrows suggestively, as though we didn’t both know that we both knew.

            “Well, what if I _am_ lying?” I put on a sarcastically confident voice. “What're you going to do about it?”

            She tapped her chin with a finger, pretending to think on it. Eventually, she shrugged and put her hands up in a “who knows?” kind of gesture. “Throw you to the wolves, maybe..." Then she nodded, as though deciding that was the best course of action for such a display of treason.

            Anyways, I’ll spare you the small-talk. After that, we essentially just had a quick back-and-forth about what courses we’d have to deal with after exams, which were coming up in about a week. She was excited for her histories and arts, and I was dreading the coming careers studies and geography. But then, as we were walking, something happened.

            Time seemed to slow down, and everything went completely silent. Then, there was a soft pinging noise, like a sewing needle falling on ceramic. The noise was incredibly quiet, but was perpetually humming, like a bell after being struck. It felt like a few minutes had passed and I was about to turn around—it seemed to be coming from behind me—when Silvara grabbed my shoulder and everything seemed to snap immediately back to normal and the noise was gone.

            “Tanis!” She had obviously been trying to tell me something when I heard the odd sound.

            I blinked. “Sorry, what did you say?” The sudden snap back to reality was fairly jarring and I was left a little out-of-sorts because of it. When Silvara went to speak again, I held up a hand. “Wait, didn't you hear that?”

            She gave me a strange look. “…Hear what?” She seemed even more confused than I was, but quickly snapped out of it. “Whatever, it was probably nothing. As I was saying, are you going to semi-formal this semester? Cause I'd rather not have to dance with a bunch of people I hardly know again; I figured I may as well bring someone I actually care about to—”

            “Wait, then why are you even going? I don't understand why you'd go if you don't even know anyone else that’s going to—”

            “Well, if you'd let me finish...!” She waited a moment to make sure I wasn’t going to interrupt her again. When she deemed it appropriate to speak again, her face quickly fell. “I kind of... promised Sara that I'd go with her...” She hesitated, seeming to think carefully on her next words. “She said she already bought her tickets but didn't want to be stuck there without any friends in case she couldn't get a date.”

“She bought her tickets before even asking anyone to go with her.” I summarized for her in a flat tone before sighing.

_Why don’t people ever think before they do shit…?_

“Well, I guess I can scrounge up some cash for a ticket. I already have something decent to wear and I’m not really doing anything anyway, so—” I cut _myself_ off that time as I realized what had just happened. "Wait... Are you asking me as your date?” I knew my eyes had widened significantly because I was flustered, but I couldn’t help it and was kind of nervous and fuck you, shut up.

            “Well, I—” Her face flushed a little. “I just figured... y’know... if you were already thinking of going... then I may as well ask you to go with me...” She popped her hood up a little to hide her cheeks and shoved her hands into her pockets, looking off to the side. It was kind of adorable.

            “I, uhm... yeah, I'll go with you... why not?” I knew I was also probably flush for reasons I already mentioned, with a stupid grin on my face to boot. “Who knows...? You might actually make a good date!” I added, this time a little more calmly, giving her arm a little nudge with my elbow, my classic shit-eating grin making itself known.

            When I said that, her blush actually _increased_ a little, though I realized it was more of a frustrated redness when she carefully extricated her right hand from her pocket and drove it into my arm. “…Ass.”

            “Uhm…OW!” I rubbed my shoulder tenderly but couldn’t help a grin when I saw her smirk in satisfaction.

            All in all, I was feeling pretty fucking nervous but ecstatic all at the same time. I was finally going to go on a date with this girl and I couldn’t have been more excited!

            Then I heard another sound, like metal brushing against metal, I felt a pressure on the back of my head, and everything went black.

            When my vision returned to me, everything was blurry for a few moments. All I could see was gray and the inside of my mouth tasted like chalk dust. Oh, and I was on my belly on something cold and hard.

I rolled over and sat up as best as I could, disoriented as your mom when she leaves the kitchen. The first thing I noticed was how much my head didn’t hurt at all. I was obviously knocked unconscious but I felt better than I had felt when I was with Silvara, excluding the overall disorientation from just waking up for the second time in one day.

_Wait… where's Vara?_

            "Vara…?” I pulled myself up onto my knees and gave a quick glance around, the blurriness having retreated, but still not seeing anyone. “Vara!” I was standing suddenly, not really sure how or when. “Silvara?!" I cried out, my call echoing back to me. There was no response beyond my own ragged breathing. I looked around, my hands shaking slightly. I mean… Sure, I didn’t live in the best neighborhood ever, but I wasn’t really expecting to be fucking kidnapped in the light of day. I seemed to be in a large, empty room, made of stone bricks. Going up and down the middle of the room was an eight or nine-foot wide, purple carpet with floral designs across it, gold frills along the edges. On either side of the carpet, there were round, stone pillars, standing in two symmetrical rows along the length of the carpet, and leading to either end of the room. At one end, beside the only window in the immense space, about a meter in width and only two in height—which made the room really freakin’ dark—the carpet led to a shining golden throne with dark blue cushions that held no person. But who knew how long those cushions would remain unmanned? At the other end of the carpet was a—

            "Doors!” At that point, I had regained my senses and calmed down immensely. I was still confused and nervous—I was just kidnapped and separated from my friend, after all—but I wasn’t as bad off anymore. I mean… I wasn’t in some abandoned factory or something and I wasn’t chained or tied up to anything, so that was a little comforting. I jogged across the length of the room, which seemed to be endless. When I finally got to the double-doors I realized how big they truly were. The doors were approximately twenty feet high and twelve feet wide. They were made of incredibly thick, incredibly solid wood, with cast iron going up and down them in patterns more intricate than Silvara's shirt. It stopped me in my tracks. Lost in awe for a few moments, I simply stared up at the marvelous doors, taking in their grandness.

_Hell, you could fit an entire battalion through this door at once... This is just ridiculous…_

I went to push on the face of the left door, seeing as there were no handles. The door opened with silent ease. I had expected a loud creaking, and that the door would have been too heavy to simply push open without some kind of mechanism. However, I witnessed no such fairytale-like issue and walked through the small gap I had made, into the next room. Honestly, I was just glad I wasn’t stuck in that room.

            On the other side of the door, there was a small chamber with a similar design to the throne room. There was a carpet going down the middle that was made of white silk but was only four or five feet wide. On the other side of this carpet, however, was a narrow passageway—maybe six feet wide—with a ceiling the same height as the double-doors I just walked through. This room was filled with much more light than the throne room, given that it had six windows, three on either wall adjacent to the doorway. Each window stood about ten feet high, and four feet wide, with stained-glass pictures, depicting fields of roses under idealistic blue skies. Thanks to the light from outside of them, the windows shone gloriously, painting the entire room in a myriad of reds, greens, and blues.

            “I couldn’t have been out that long. So... it's either still day... or it's my birthday...”

            Then I heard that odd sound again—the one like a pin dropping and ringing out forever—and a calm voice sounded from behind me. “No time has passed yet, my friend. You’ve only been out for a few minutes.”

            I turned my head so quickly that I thought I would give myself whiplash. “Who—?” There stood a man, approximately my age it seemed. His shoulders were slumped, his knees were bent slightly, and he was slouching. He was quite a bit taller than me it seemed, maybe six-foot if he stood up straight. His dark brown hair reached down to just under his ears and brown eyes. He was kind of lanky and he wore a light-blue t-shirt with a Chinese dragon on it in black, black jeans, with a set of silver chains through the belt loops, and black sneakers. He was a little more tanned than I was, but still pretty pale.

            “Wha—there was definitely nobody in that room with me! Where did you come from? Are you the one who—”

            He held up a placating hand and spoke like a mother would to her child after knocking over a glass while playing. He was nurturing, soothing. “Just relax... You're safe here; we aren't going to hurt you or your lady friend. In fact—”

            “Relax? You expect me to relax?! You kidnapped me and my friend and brought us to this... this... well, God knows where we are! Then you separate us and you want me to relax?! Who the hell—”

            Then his face went stony and his voice unshaking, stern. “I said calm down!” It took me by surprise and I involuntarily took a step back. He turned soft again and then spoke once more. “Geez... I'm sorry we had to do it like this, but we weren't sure if you would cooperate. So, we had to knock you out and separate you so that we could more effectively explain the situation...” He grinned now. By no means was it ear-to-ear, but he was being friendly, at least. “Now, may I go ahead or are you going to cut me off again?”

            “I, uhm... Sorry?” I didn’t know what to do. He was so calm, so reassuring. He had literally knocked me and my friend unconscious, hauled us off to wherever the hell we were, and there I was apologizing to him for bad manners. “Just… Who are you?”

            “Oh, how rude of me... I was so busy with business that I forgot about pleasantries! My name is Sylar.” He gave a quick bow for theatrics’ sake and then righted himself and continued. “And before you say so, I already know your name is Tanis. We've been watching you for quite some time now...”

            “You keep saying ‘we’. There are more of you?”

            “Well, there’s me, then there’s Kai, who’s with your friend. There’s Cealum, who’s off recruiting for the day, and then there’s Lantigua, who’s off scouting; she’ll be back later, before Cealum returns probably.” He seemed to be making a mental checklist for his own sake more than for mine at that point.

            I had so many questions and every time he answered one, it just brought so many more forward. “Wait, recruiting? Scouting? What are you—?”

            “Well, if you would just let me explain the situation, you'll begin to understand.”

            “Oh... Sorry; I'll shut up now...” There I was, apologizing to the kidnapper again.

            “Okay, where to start...” He cupped his chin with one hand and looked up, as if pleading to some unseen force. “Well, there are three holds in The Realm... Oh, uh, holds are like... small communities of people, like us.”

I stopped for a moment. “The Realm?”

“Oh, that’s just what we call this place. Anyway, each hold has a King, well except for ours; ours died not that long ago, sadly. Now, each hold has its own history, and they all intertwine. All three of these holds are sworn enemies because reasons.” He looked outside and seemed to take note of something. I thought it was the time, perhaps. “Come on, walk with me. I'll explain on the way.” He motioned me to go forward, towards the narrow hallway at the opposite end of the hall from the big doors.

            “Oh, uhm... okay...” I hesitated. “But where is it that we're going?”

            “We're going to go visit your friend, but it's a long walk, so I'll have time to explain everything on the way.” Again, his voice was so calm, so reassuring. I hesitantly took a few steps toward the passage before stopping again.

            “Silvara...” My eyes glazed over a little while I tried to comprehend everything that was happening. Needless to say, my mind was basically up shit creek without a paddle.

            “Yes, yes, Silvara, now think with this head.” He put his finger on his forehead. “Not this one!” He pointed downwards, grinning as my eyes widened.

            I flushed a little and started walking.

            “As I was saying, these three holds are sworn enemies. We are on the brink of war and we are without a King and low on forces, just to top it all off. That’s why Cealum—”

            “Is out recruiting... And this... what was her—Lantigua—that's what she's scouting; she’s looking into the other holds’ plans, making sure that they aren't about to launch an attack yet...” As this Sylar fellow said it would, everything started to click into place in my mind.

            “Ah, you catch on quick I see. Even quicker than we had imagined... So, do you know why we brought your friend and you here, then?” He raised his brow. This was a test now.

            “We're... recruits? Okay, that's very flattering and all, but if you're about to go to war over... whatever, then I'm definitely not your guy. If you didn't notice, I'm not the most fit…” I gestured to my stomach, protruding slightly from under my shirt. “I doubt I would make much of a soldier. I suppose you could have recruited me for battle strategy or something, but I'm not very knowledgeable when it comes to war tactics, either. So, I don't really see how I could—”

            "No, no, no... Believe me... It's not what you're thinking. Remember how I said ‘people like us’? We are not merely soldiers; we are a group of people who have stumbled upon something much more interesting than modern warfare. You see this?” He pointed to a small, golden, pentagonal object hanging from the chains on his jeans. It had an emblem of a rose on it. “We call this a badge. This badge symbolizes the strength of our hold and you, my friend, are in the hold of the Rose-Thorns... I know, not the manliest name for a hold, but hey, beggars can't be choosers. The other two holds are the Sword-Arms and the Shield-Bearers. These badges have been passed down from the original Rose-Thorn members and theirs from their original members and so on. And they are not _just_ a symbol of our hold; they are also tools of great power. We have the ability to...” His voice trailed off, and he fiddled with the badge at his side. “Well, how about I just show you? You probably wouldn't believe me if I were to just tell you.”

            He grabbed the badge with one hand and held it up as far as the chains would allow, which was to about his mid-abdomen area. Suddenly, there was a bright, white light. I buried my eyes into my forearm so I wouldn’t be blinded. Then, there was that sound again—the pin dropping on ceramic, followed by perpetual ringing. Afterwards, there was a different, more subtle noise, like two pieces of sheet metal sliding across each other and the light was gone. I put my arm down to see that instead of the badge, there was now a katana held in his hands, and a sheath hanging in the chains on his belt. It took me a moment to realize that the metallic sound I had heard must have been him unsheathing his sword.

            “What in the hell...?” My eyes widened for the umpteenth time as I stood dumbstruck at the sight before me.

            “That's not the half of it...” He smirked. The pinging sound again and he was no longer in front of me. I heard the sound of footsteps behind me, and I turned to face them. There he was, standing, with sword still in hand.

            “How did you…?” This was the weirdest, and also the most awesome, thing that I had ever witnessed.

            He simply gave me a knowing smile and shrugged. “It is simply the power that the badges bestow upon us. We can teleport, read minds, go invisible, and transform our badges into tools.”

            “Wait, so you can all do this? And the other holds as well?”

            “Yes, like I said—”

            “—‘People like us’...”

            He chuckled, “Exactly... Now, let's keep walking.”

            There was another, more brief flash, and then the sword and sheath had changed back to their original forms—the badge—and we continued walking in silence. I imagined that we were only walking in silence so that Sylar could allow everything to settle in my mind, and it was much appreciated, honestly. And so we went, on to where Silvara was being kept.

            After about another ten minutes of walking with Sylar, we came to a door that was obviously designed after the door in the throne room, with the intricate, black, metal patterns, though it was only a single door and it was much smaller; only one person would be able to fit through it at a time. Sylar stopped.

            “This is it.” he said, gesturing to the small door.

            “This is where you're keeping Vara?” I made a disapproving face. Why did I get the throne room with the giant doors and fancy carpet when all she got was what looked like a storage closet?

            “Are you alright?” Apparently, Sylar heard the apprehension in my voice.

            “Yeah, I’m good, it's just… I figured we’d be getting equal treatment.”

            "Well, we put you in the throne room ‘cause it was the only room where you couldn't get into anything.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and, again, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of calm reassurance wash over me. When he had realized that I wasn’t going to say anything further, he continued. “Speaking of which, I'll get Lantigua to put a bed in there for you.” As before, he seemed to be checking things off in his mind, not really saying it aloud for my sake as much as for his own. “Anyways, we put Silvara in here for the same reason we put you in the throne room; it’s an empty room where she couldn’t get into anything.” He said it all so matter-of-factly that I realized I was just overreacting. Mind you, I _was_ just kidnapped and forced into a war or something, so I was a little bit stressed still.

            “Oh, that makes sense I guess...” I scratched the back of my head, flushing a little. “For a second there, I thought I was just special or something.” I flashed him a quick, sarcastic grin.

            “Well, that may be truer than you’d think…” He turned away from me and approached the door.

            “What do you—?”

            “Hey, Kai, open up!” He simply knocked on the door, cutting my question short. There was no answer. “Kai, it's me, Sylar!” Again, there was no answer. “What the hell...? Must be sleeping on the job again... Lazy bastard...” His voice gradually grew smaller, becoming no more than a quiet grumbling.

            The door suddenly swung open hitting Sylar, right in the face it seemed, and he fell to the ground. A figure slid out from the other side of the door too quickly for me to comprehend and rammed into me.

            I groaned, lying on the stone floor for the second time that morning. There was something soft pressed up against my face, pinning me to the ground.

            “Tanis!” the unidentified mass atop my body exclaimed.

            Then it dawned on me.

            “Vara…?” I wondered, muffled between her chest and the floor. “Can you get off me please? I can barely breathe...” In all honesty, I’d have rather just stayed like that for the rest of the day. Well, minus the head-against-stone part.

            “Tanis, you escaped! Come on! Let's get out of here!” She squirmed her way back to a standing position and started to run when I grabbed the leg of her jeans. She tugged free pretty easily, though, and looked down on me, her face mixed with fear and anger. “What are you doing?! We need to go! Now!” She pulled me to my feet and started to drag me along.

            Now that I was on my feet and had my balance back, I grabbed her shoulders. “No, Vara, wait a second. Didn't they tell you—?”

            “Tell me? The knocking just woke me up now and that guy in there just sat there, staring at me; I thought he was going to rape me or something!” She gestured towards the room on the other side of the open door.

            I faintly heard Sylar speak up from his place on the ground. “Wow... You're a feisty one, my God...” He stood up, rubbing his nose. “Kai! Didn't you tell her anything?” he yelled through the door.

            “Wha-What...?” a voice answered sleepily from the other side. “Sylar? Oh, is it time to tell her where he is? Wait... Where did she go?” Some clattering could be heard, like a chair being knocked over, as heavy footsteps approached the doorway.

            “She's out here...” Sylar sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, no longer because of the hit to the face, I’d imagine. “You sleepin’ on the job again?” This time he smirked, just shaking his head.

            “ _SLEEPING?!_ ” Silvara roared. “He definitely was _not_ sleeping! He was staring right at me! And who the hell _are_ you people, anyways?” She was trembling now. I gave her a reassuring smile and squeezed her shoulders gently. She stopped shaking, but she was still incredibly tense.

            Sylar sighed. “Kai, get out here.” He tapped his foot impatiently and muttered something.

            A large man—so tall, he must have been six-six; he hit his head off the door frame, coming out of the room—now stood in front of us, rubbing his eyes as though they hadn't adjusted to the light yet. He wore a KISS shirt, with all four members of the band displayed on it. Over top of it, he had a jean jacket with the sleeves ripped off. He wore beige, steel-toed work boots and light, blue jeans torn at the knees. Like Sylar, he had a set of chains dangling from his belt loops, though his badge was nowhere to be seen. He had short, messy, brown hair, brown eyes, and he was quite wide. He looked like a cross between a rocker, a punk, and a football player.

            “So, you're Kai...” I looked up at him, my eyes going a little wider. The sheer size of the man was incredible. Despite his size, however, he also seemed to be only about the age of Silvara and me. He had that round, baby-face thing going on.

            “Are you all so young?” We were talking about a war here, but all of us were just kids!

            “Yeah, more or less...” Sylar responded, his face falling a little. “The oldest of us is Cealum; he turns 19 in a week from now, I think...”

            “Uh... On the twelfth, I'm pretty sure...” It was Kai this time, staring upwards, talking to himself more than anything else.

            When I gave him an ‘are-you-kidding-me’ kind of look, Sylar realized why I’d asked. “All the older members of the hold were lost in the last battle.” He gave me an apologetic look for some reason, and I simply nodded solemnly in return.

Then Kai turned to Silvara. “Oh, and sorry for ‘staring’ at you; I sleep with my eyes open...” He scratched the back of his head, a dumb grin on his face.

            “Excuse me! But haven't you all forgotten something?” Silvara’s eyes were mildly panicked still, but seeing me converse so casually with the others must have calmed her down some; she didn’t seem ready to sprint out the door anymore, so it was a start.

            Sylar grinned. “I suppose that it's high-time for introductions, hm?”

            We were all sitting in what was explained to be the sparring room now, chairs laid about so we didn’t have to stand anymore. The place was pretty damned big—there were six designated training areas set up around the hard-wood floor, marked and outlined with white paint, each about the size of a tennis court. It reminded me of the high-school’s gym, just way bigger. “So... what you're telling me… is that you're all part of some organization or something and you’re about to go to war with two other groups just like you... and you're recruiting Tanis and I?” I had expected Silvara to freak out when she heard we were being recruited for war, but she actually seemed to be calmed by it. Or maybe it was just because it was Sylar doing the explaining. Who knows?

            “Yeah, that just about sums it up...” Sylar simply nodded.

            “And you said there are two more of you? This... Lantigua, who’s off scouting and—what was it—Cealum, who’s like… your leader or whatever now, since your King passed away?”

            "Yes," he stated bluntly, his gaze lowering a little at the mention of their previous King. I heard Kai give a soft sigh as well.

            “And you all possess these... these ‘badges’, which allow you to do supernatural things... And you've somehow managed to keep it a secret from the rest of the world...?” She seemed more intrigued than anything at this point.

            “Yes, and we will continue to keep it a secret... forever, if possible...” He gave her a hard stare, making sure she understood that was more of a command than an answer.

She crossed her arms and smiled. “Well, I've got to say; it's definitely not how I had planned my school-day...” I could hear the hint of wonder in her voice, but she was pure confidence and excitement.

            Then, there was that familiar sound of a pin hitting ceramic and perpetually ringing. Y’know, I’m getting tired of saying that every time; from now on, we’re calling it a _ping_. Italicized and everything. Nobody else seemed to notice the _ping_ , and then—

            “Hey, guys! Who. Have. We. Got. _Here_? They seem cute~...” The newcomer's playful voice came from behind me. It was a strong, feminine voice.

_That must be that Lantigua girl that Sylar was talking about earlier._

Silvara and I whipped around only to have the voice come from behind us once more. “Hmm... decent reflexes on them, too—not bad there, Sy. Seems you got us some fine recruits... Hell, Cealum might put you on recruitment duty from now on. Man thinks he's got to do everything important himself, doesn't he?”

            Silvara and I were already fixed upon the newcomer once more. She stood tall, about the same size as Sylar, if not slightly taller. She was lanky like Sylar, too. Her skin was mocha brown and her eyes were so dark, they were almost black. She had long, brown, curly hair with blonde low-lights. She wore a tight, black, leather jacket with a hood on it, overtop of an open, zip-up, striped, grey sweater, with a plain, white t-shirt underneath. She wore light blue jeans that had the same style to them as Silvara's. She had a pair of really tall, black boots that matched her jacket, and complimented her long legs. I could honestly say that she was as attractive as Silvara, but in a much different way. In every place that Silvara looked soft and comforting, this girl looked sharp and exciting. It would have been an interesting contrast to notice, had I not have just been staring at her slender legs.

            “Hey, newbie—” Lantigua turned to Sylar. “—what was his name?"

            “Tanis.” Sylar just shook his head.

            “Tanis! Oh, cute name~... Are you going to just stare at me all day or were you planning on speaking up?” she teased, winking. “You know, you've already got a pretty girl right there beside you...” she cooed.

            She was talking really quickly, and my mind was having trouble keeping up. I couldn’t help but lose my ability to speak. Silvara seemed just as lost. I opened my mouth to say something, but closed it soon afterward, all speech having left me. I repeated that motion a few times, probably not unlike a fish.

            Kai rose to our defense when he saw how affected we were. “Hey now, Lantigua, be nice to the recruits.” Or at least, I thought he was going to defend us. He smirked and continued. “It's not their fault they’ve never seen such beauty." He gave a theatrical wave of his arms, gesturing towards the tall girl. When he grinned again, it was obvious he was teasing us more than he was complimenting her.

            Silvara whispered angrily. “Tanis! You're even blushing!”

            I whispered back. “I-It's not my fault! It's just happening! Besides, you’re blushing pretty hard, too!”

            She crossed her arms and huffed.

After attempting a few more apologetic glances Silvara’s way, I decided to listen in as Lantigua started giving her report of the scouting mission.

            “So, there are about four-hundred wielders left fighting for the Sword-Arms and just over one-hundred on the Shield-Bearers’ side like before—”

            “Wait a second,” Apparently Silvara had decided to listen in as well. She continued. “You mean to tell me that the five of us, plus this Cealum and whoever he finds, have to go up against five-hundred other people? That's insane! How could we possibly win against that many people?”

            I was also quite taken aback by the news, but all things considered, larger armies had been wiped out by fewer people. “Vara, they probably already know that; that's why we're having this meeting. We all need to band together and figure out a plan so that we don't get overwhelmed.” While I was mainly trying to comfort Silvara, I also managed to reassure the rest of the group that I at least thought I knew what I was doing.

            Sylar confirmed for me that that was exactly what he was hoping to hear. “Thanks, Tanis.”

            “Anyways, so we're going to have to, more or less, just hold out here until they die down in numbers from fighting each other and then we can pick off the remaining few...” Lantigua’s plan wasn’t _terrible_ but as soon as she said it out loud, I could tell that she didn’t really believe it herself. The group’s morale quickly dissipated.

            Then I thought of something. “Wait, if you can all teleport, how are we supposed to ‘hold out’ here, wouldn’t the other holds be able to just teleport members in here? I don't—”

            Sylar was the first to speak up. “Ah, see, when teleporting, it's like _Jumper_ or _X-Men_ ; you have to be able to picture where you're going. It'd be terrible if you ended up with only half of your body through the wall, after all.” Sylar explained.

            “Oh, I see... And they've never seen the inside of this place then?” I questioned further.

            Lantigua spoke up now. “Exactly...” Her face brightened a bit and she crossed her arms, back straight. “However, I've been in both of their strongholds!”

            That brought the morale back to the room and Silvara was the first to speak up. “So, then we have the advantage!” Everyone in the room smiled at her optimistic spirit.

Then there was a _ping_ , coming from the door; I turned to meet it this time, everyone else in the room looking at me with confused expressions.

            Then, as expected, a voice sounded out. “Exactly right, my girl...”

            There, standing in the doorway was a tall man. A couple inches taller than Sylar but not as tall as Kai. He was dark-skinned with a short, black afro and dark brown eyes. Unlike Sylar and Lantigua, he was well-built. Not big, like Kai; he was lean. He just looked… strong.

            I spoke up. “You must be—”

            “I’m Cealum, yes.” he finished for me. “And these are the other new recruits.” He pointed behind him to nine dumbfounded individuals, all standing awkwardly in the hall.

            One of them stepped forward. It was another boy, about my height, and he was thin. He had a small pair of glasses bridged on his nose and he was in a simple, black t-shirt and gray slacks. His skin was an almost ashen colour and as he spoke, his voice was neutral, soft but easily heard. “Uhm... Hey... My name’s Karian... If you don’t mind me asking… where are we? And how did we get here?”

            The other eight recruits, four more men and four women, all stood, huddled together, behind this Karian, who had so bravely came forward and spoke.

            Sylar just face palmed. “Cealum, did you not explain to them what's going on yet?”

            “No, sorry... I didn't have the time. Any longer and the Sword-Arms would've snatched them all up.” Cealum’s voice was very calm; it even seemed to ease the tension in the nine new recruits. Between him and Sylar, I wouldn’t have been surprised if they all just fell asleep from catharsis.

            Sylar sighed, and then continued. “I see. Hey, Lantigua... You mind showing them around and explaining to them what's going on?” It was more of a command than a question. “I’ve said it more than enough times already.”

            She gave him a knowing smirk, but stopped. “Uh, no problem, but what about the—”

            Sylar cut her off and gave her a hard look. “We'll worry about that later.” I assumed it was probably for the sake of the nine newbies.

_What else could it have been about?_

“We've got to get Tanis and Silvara here suited up, show them how the badges work. You know.” he finished.

            “Badges...?” There came a small chorus of voices from the group behind Cealum as they chattered about what they thought was going on. They all seemed calm enough now; they were just confused and curious still.

            Lantigua stepped past Cealum into the hall, the skip in her step gone. “I'll explain it to you all in a minute. Come with me.” The nine new recruits all followed her down the hall, the only one even bothering to hesitate being Karian. The room was now completely silent. I was almost anticipating the _ping_ that time, waiting for another interruption or confusing introduction or theatrical display... but it never came.

After a few more moments, everyone seemed to have relaxed and Cealum broke the silence. “So, as you know, I'm Cealum. Cealum Astrum.” he said, facing Silvara and I. Then he turned to Sylar. “They know everything already, right?” he asked.

            “Yeah, they should; we explained everything to them. Except for—” Sylar started.

            “Except for how the badges work...” Cealum finished, giving Sylar a look not dissimilar to the one Sylar had given Lantigua. “Well, we'll get into that right now then won't we? I'll go get the badges for them.” he continued.

            There was the _ping_ again, and he was gone.

            _Does anyone else actually hear that? They never seem to react…_

“Do you guys—” _Ping._ Cealum was back now and he had two badges with him, one in either hand. These badges didn't have the rose emblem on them, however. They were just blank, golden pentagons.

             “Okay, now there's one for each of you. You may notice that—”

            “Hey! These don't have roses on them like Sylar's!”

            _Astute observational skills as always, Vara._ I shook my head, grinning.

            “Uhm, yes, precisely...” He cleared his throat and continued. “That's because these ones haven't been issued an owner yet, or their previous owner has passed. The rose will appear only when you have successfully transformed the badge into your tool and back.”

            “Wait, you said tool, not weapon...” I cast a sidelong glance at Sylar’s badge. “We aren't all given the same thing?”

            Cealum grinned and turned to Sylar. “You're right; this one does catch on quick. I might stick you on permanent recruiting duty.” He gave Sylar a quick wink and Sylar simply snorted in response. Then he turned back to me. “No, we are not given the same thing. Sylar got a katana, Kai got spiked gloves, Lantigua got her jacket, and I got goggles.” he explained.

            I knitted my eyebrows. “I see... Well, I understand the katana and the gloves, and I would assume the jacket is why Lantigua is such a good sneak—she said she’s seen the inside of the other holds; I’m assuming it stealths her or something similar—but what do your goggles do?”

            “Again, I'm astounded at how quick-witted you are... My goggles allow me to see things that it normally takes years to know... I can see the level of a person's intelligence, the condition of their physical strength and health, their height, their weight; I can even see things like their name and where they were born, their current thought and emotion, those kinds of things.”

            “Hm... Well, thank you for the compliment, but you would be much more attuned to analyzing someone than I it would seem... So, again, I’m confused as to why I’m even here.”

            “That may be so, but my talent comes artificially,” he tapped his goggles, “where yours is a natural gift. Besides, two heads are better than one.”

            “This is true, I suppose. But you—”

            Silvara giggled and put a hand on my shoulder. “Okay, okay, quit your flirting! We get it; you’re both super smart and useful. How is it that we activate these things? If a war is about to break out, I'd rather not waste time throwing around compliments; let’s get down to business!”

            I rolled my eyes and Cealum seemed somewhat surprised at Silvara’s excitement but he just grinned and crossed his arms. “Alright, alright, let's get started, then.” He handed one badge to me, and the other to Silvara, and then backed up to where he was standing before.

            Holding the badge in my hand, it seemed almost weightless, though I had assumed they would have been at least a few pounds.

            “They're so light!” Silvara once more decided to speak my thoughts aloud. “Are they fragile? I don't want to break it...” She held it in both of her cupped hands in her lap, like one would hold a baby kitten.

            “No, no,” Cealum chuckled, “they won't break. Unless you use a summoning on them, that is... So be careful when fighting the other wielders. Oh, we call our transformed tools summonings and everyone who has a badge is called a wielder. It's easier that way, and it sounds pretty kickass...” He grinned.

            “Okay, so how do we do this? Are we just supposed to think about what we want it to become or what?” I concentrated on the face of the badge, clutching it in one hand.

            Sylar spoke up this time. “Well, something along those lines, I guess... You kind of have to think of what you want your summoning to do. Like my katana gives me incredible agility and slows down my perception of time, so it's like everything's moving in slow motion—”

            “—and my gloves give me a huge strength boost and a lot more endurance.” Kai stated proudly.

            It was Cealum’s turn now. “Lantigua's jacket gives her incredible speed and allows her to turn invisible, and you already know what my goggles do—knowledge and foresight.”

            “So I have to think of what kinds of qualities I want, huh? Hm... That's a tough one...” I said, staring at the floor, pondering.

            Kai spoke up again. “And it has to be something specific. I figured I’d be a smart-ass and need anything and everything all at once. Nothing happened. You only ever get two traits, it seems. Strength, endurance, speed, agility, intelligence, you name it and you get it. But you only ever get two.” He nodded sagely to himself.

            Silvara was fiddling around with the badge, stroking it lightly while she thought. “I don't really know what I want either; I mean there are so many different things that these badges can do... I'm assuming we only get to try this once, huh?” Of course, she already knew what the answer would be.

            Cealum started again. “If your badge ever breaks, you can always get a new one, but the new one will immediately take the same form as your first summoning. So, in essence, yes, sadly, you only get one shot at it, so make it count.”

            “One shot, huh? Maybe that’s all I need.” Silvara’s grin widened as she seemed to decide on her qualities. “Alright, I think I know what I want. What do I do now?”

            “You just grab the badge with both hands, one on either side, and keep the thought in mind, then wait for it to transform.”

            “That's it? Okay!” Silvara seemed pleased that it was as simple as all that, but I was a mix between confused and disappointed.

I thought maybe we'd have to like... I don't know; infuse it with our body or something ridiculous like that. I guess I just watch too much anime...

            “Doesn't seem too hard...” Silvara placed her hands on either side of the golden badge and it started to glow. There was a great flash— _ping_ —like when Sylar summoned his katana, and then, in Silvara's hand, there was what seemed to be a longbow made of pure shadows. There were wisps of darkness that trailed off into nothingness, coming off of the bow in entrancing curls. “I wonder...” she muttered. Bringing her hand close to where the drawstring should have been, a bright light filled her hand and attached itself to the bow, forming into the shape of an arrow—an arrow made of pure light. She whipped around and fired the arrow at the wall. The arrow pierced into the wall with ease, and upon closer inspection the arrow seemed to have pinned a fly to the wall. Then I realized it was pinned by _only_ its wings.

            “…That was awesome!” I raked a hand through my hair and wore a stupid grin on my face. Now I was _really_ glad my mom forced me to go to school today. “You wanted your sight improved, I assume? You said recently that your eyes had seen better days. Your sight and reflexes have been improved.”

            “So you do pay attention to what I say when we're walking to school.” She shot me a quick smirk.

            “Of course I do~!” I grinned back. “Well, anyways... I guess it's my turn now, isn't it?”

            Cealum nodded. “Whenever you think you’re ready.”

            While Silvara was thinking, I had more or less figured out what I wanted. Cealum had his knowledge and foresight, Sylar had his agility and the ability to slow down his perception of time, Kai had incredible strength and endurance, Lantigua had her speed and invisibility, and now Silvara had the eyes of a hawk and reflexes to match. In RPG terms, this group had their tank, a scout, a fighter, an assassin, and a marksman. All the party was missing now was a mage and a support. We needed someone who could assist the whole team in being a team, not just another fighter or someone who would go and take on lone enemies on their own. We needed someone we could turn to for assistance. We needed someone who could rally our forces and make people see what we wanted them to see. We needed a leader. We needed a King.

I placed my other hand on the opposite side of the badge, without hesitation, and, almost instantly, it began to glow. The glow was so bright that I could no longer see anything or anyone around me, but I couldn't look away from the badge. The light was captivating, almost beautiful in a way I couldn't really describe. The feeling I got upon the badge transforming was different from happiness; it wasn't ecstasy; it was pure intrigue—pure anticipation. When the light dimmed, I was shocked, if not a little disappointed. What lay in my hand was nothing more, and nothing less, than a small, white, circular tablet, about the size of my finger nail.

            Silvara tried, and failed, to stifle a giggle. “What is it?”

            “It's... a pill...” It was all I could say. Out of all the things my summoning could have become, it chose to become a pill... Why? What the hell could possibly come from a stupid little—fuck it. Out of lack of understanding and, honestly, quite a bit of angry despair, I threw the small pill into my mouth and swallowed in one quick motion, praying for something, _anything,_ to happen.

            “Well... do you feel any different?” Cealum looked on, intrigued, while everyone else just stared, tense and anticipating.

            “Not really... Hold on...” I lifted my hand and pointed my palm outward. As if some understanding had dawned on me, I simply let the energy flow into my hand. I didn’t know how I knew what I was doing, but I knew _exactly_ what I was doing. I pictured the first thing that came to my mind and a trail of blue mist appeared in the palm of my hand, snaking forward, to rest in front of me. The mist stopped a certain distance away and began to gather. It spun around itself, slowly, shifting, shaping itself into what seemed to be a humanoid shape. And then it solidified and colours became apparent. And before me, where the mist had been a mere moment earlier was Silvara. Her shining silver hair, the same coat and shirt and jeans and boots that she had been wearing since this morning, the spiked collar and wristlets, it looked just like her.

            And then it spoke. “Tanis?”

            And then Silvara, the real Silvara, spoke. “You needed… You summoned… Me?”

            And then I blushed like crazy.

            “What? N-No! It’s an illusion! My summoning gave me the ability to cast illusions!” The blue mist trailed from my hand again, and encompassed it, elongated to the ground, and then solidified, into a wooden staff. “See? I can make whatever I want!” I twirled the staff around quickly and slammed the butt of it into the ground, making a resounding _thud_ fill the room.

            Silvara laughed and flushed a little herself, scratching the back of her head. “Sorry, I guess I overthought that one.”

            The faux-Silvara just stood there, looking around, like she was waiting for something.

            Cealum spoke up after a few seconds, breaking the awkward air in the room. “If that’s an illusion…” he pointed to the staff I made, “…then why did I feel the vibration when it hit the ground?”

            “Well, an illusion is an interesting thing.” I stopped to think on my next words carefully. “Let’s put it this way. The illusions are so ‘real’, that they may as well be genuine. That’s why the illusion of Silvara spoke and is more-or-less acting of its own volition right now, and the staff seemed like it actually had an impact on the ground. Your perception has been altered so that you truly believe it is there. I could hit someone with this staff and, though they wouldn’t be physically injured, they would think they have been. They would feel the pain and if I ‘broke’ something when I hit them, they would think, and feel, the restriction of a broken bone.”

            “What about you? Do your illusions affect you as well?”

            I held out my arm and brought the staff down on it, and where the staff would have made contact with my arm, it dissolved into blue mist, and the rest of the staff followed suit.

            He nodded solemnly and cupped his chin with a hand. “Well, that is quite impressive. But what exactly, then, if you don’t mind me asking, did you ask the badge for as a trait?”

            “I asked for the ability to make people see what I want them to see.”

            _Ping._

Lantigua appeared in the doorway. “Hey, I showed the rookies around. I guess we'll give them their badges tomorrow; I showed them all to their room's... for... now...” Her voice trailed off when she saw that there were two Silvara’s in front of her. “Who—”

The faux-Silvara’s eyes lit up and she leapt at Lantigua, knocking her to the ground and putting the two of them in a… interesting position.

Lantigua panicked and started thrashing about, but the illusion had pinned her to the floor and had started… kissing her.

Silvara looked at what was going on, and then looked to me, her face blank and completely unreadable. “Tanis… What the hell is going on?”

It took me a few moments to realize that I was staring, and a few moments longer after that to hear what Silvara had said to me. And it took no time at all to immediately regret having taken so long to act. I hastily waved my hand in the direction of the illusion and it instantly dissolved into the characteristic blue mist.

Lantigua stood up, a little shaken, and blushing furiously. “ _WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT FOR?!_ ”

I blushed and held my hands up placatingly. “I-I didn’t mean for that to happen; I swear! That illusion had a mind of its own!” I looked to Silvara, who was giving me a glare that could freeze over hell. Then I looked back to Lantigua, who was giving me a glare that could reignite it. I mumbled a quick “sorry” and just sat down, head hung low, face more red than Lantigua’s had been.

_I feel like I could have handled that better._

A voice resounded somewhere in the back of my mind.

_Yeah, no shit._

The voice sounded pretty similar to my own, but there was something about it that just wasn’t quite the same.

_…Okay, I know I talk to myself a lot but I’ve never responded before. Who are you?_

_I’m you. Well, sort of._

_What, I have an active conscience now?_

_Sure. Let’s say I’m your conscience—your much better-looking, infinitely more awesome conscience—and you aren’t just talking to yourself like a sad little man._

_But why did you appear now?_

_Why do you think?_

_…I don’t know; is it a side-effect of The Realm?_

_I don’t see why not._

_Uh-huh. Well, it looks like Cealum’s about to say something, so I’m just going to return to reality now._

_Mhm, you do that._

Cealum chuckled at the look on Lantigua’s face and then began speaking. “Alright, now that the two have you have your summonings, you should probably go to bed, too. It’s going to be an early morning tomorrow; the two of you will be going on your first mission to test the waters.”

Silvara and I looked to each other, then to Cealum and spoke in unison. “Mission?”

I took over. “What kind of mission?”

“It’ll be a simple scouting mission. The two of you will go with Lantigua to see what the Sword-Arms are up to. They have more forces than anyone right now, so they’re the most likely to make the first move.”

“Are there any objectives beyond that?” I looked down to my hand and let some blue mist flow freely around it, taking some amount of comfort in this new gift.

“Nope, there’s nothing else to do—for now, at least.” He opened up the door to the sparring room and looked out some nearby windows in the hall, the same kinds of windows as were in the room before the throne room. “It’s getting dark now; let’s get you to your rooms.”

_Aren’t you forgetting something?_

_What do you mean?_

_Oh, I don’t know… Hey, where was the last place you slept?_

_Uh… At home, obviously, what does that have to do with—Oh._

“Cealum! What are we going to do about our families and friends, our homes, our lives?!” I stood up now, panicking a little. Everything had happened so quickly, I had completely forgotten about school and my mom and all of those comparatively mundane things.

As soon as I said it, I saw Silvara tense up as well and she was about to say something when Cealum cut us both off.

He raised his hands placatingly. “Don’t worry; there was actually something we forgot to tell the two of you about this whole thing. It just slipped our minds ‘cause we’re so used to it. Our lands and the other holds’ lands are in a different realm than that of Earth. We call it ‘The Realm’, for lack of something better to call it. It is a realm that can only be entered or exited by a wielder. And while you’re here, the ‘you’ that’s on Earth is stopped in time. You have to understand that time doesn’t really flow. The past, the present, and the future, all exist at once. Everything that has happened, is happening, or will happen, is at the same time, all happening right now. You simply only perceive your own life because of when you were born. It’s a little complicated, but I’m sure you understand. So, as we speak, here, right now, you and Silvara are on your way to school, as you were before we brought you here.”

“So no one will even know we were gone…” I hummed to myself for a moment, content.

“Not only will no one _know_ you were gone, but you truly never _were_ gone.”

“But… wait. If I was to go back right now, but Vara was to stay here, would I start walking without her? Or would it be as though she was back already anyways? Would time just wait for her to come back?” The more I thought about it all, the less it made sense and the more ridiculous it sounded.

Kai walked up to me and put a huge hand on my shoulder. “Trust me, man, you don’t want to think about it. Just accept that it works. We don’t really get it ourselves.”

I sighed and then snorted. “Fair enough, I suppose.”

Cealum started again. “So, you two should go get rested up. You’ll go on your initiation mission and then you’ll come back here, debrief us, and go to school.” He smiled, knowing how silly it must have sounded.

Silvara and I just shook our heads and laughed it off.

“What about the other recruits?” I wondered aloud.

_Surely, they must have to go on some kind of mission, too._

            “No, we still have to give them their badges. After we do, they’ll spar for a bit. Get used to their summonings—we’ve been watching the two of you for a while now and you seem capable enough without the training—and then we’ll send them in their own groups on their own missions when needed.”

            “Well, that sounds good enough to me.” I turned to Silvara. “Guess it’s time to hit the hay, hm?”

            She smiled and nodded.

            Lantigua walked past Silvara and put a hand on top of her head, ruffling her hair a little on the way. “C’mon, Vara, I’ll show you to your room.” Silvara glared up at her for a second, annoyed that she had messed with her hair. But when Lantigua didn’t turn around to notice her glare, she just gave up and followed Lantigua out.

            Kai grinned at the scene and then walked up to me, putting a hand on my shoulder, like he had done before. “Judging by how the two of you are acting, you’ll fit right in around here. So long as you realize Lantigua’s just messing around, you’ll be alright.” He winked and then headed out of the room himself.

            Cealum grinned as well before he started speaking. “You know your way back to the throne room?” I nodded. “Good, ‘cause I need to talk to Sy for a few minutes.” He looked to where Sylar was still sitting in the back of the room. “C’mon.”

            Sylar stood up and nodded to me. “See ya tomorrow.”

            “Yeah, see ya, guys.”

            _Ping. Ping._

_And then there were two._

_There’s only one of us y’know._

_Yeah, but it’s more fun to pretend we’re two separate entities._

_Geez, want me to conjure up a body for you?_

_…_

_I’m not going to conjure up a body for you._ I sighed. _Let’s just go to bed…_

_…Agreed._

And so, we—I mean _I_ —left the room and headed down the hall, towards the throne room and a comfy bed. Tomorrow was going to be an interesting day. But, so far, interesting had been good. So I slept pretty soundly that night.


	2. The Maze of Mist and the Flood of Fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so... I don't know what the issue is with tabulation on this site... I'll try to figure it out and ensure future chapters are clear of this issue. When I figure it out, I'll also repost these chapters. For now, I apologize, but it doesn't seem to harm anything, really, so please enjoy, regardless! And if anyone recognizes the reference in this chapter, kudos.
> 
> EDIT: Fixed the tabulation errors. Also, I'm a stupid dumb. The way I had it set up in my doc, there was a line-break to separate two parts of this chapter. Without the graphic itself (which just got eaten by the site's reformatting), the continuity of the chapter got DEMOLISHED. I fixed it now, though. Sorry to anyone who read this previously!

I woke up the next day feeling better than I had in months. As the angsty teenager that I was, I had always wished that my life could be interesting, exciting, like something out of a book or a movie or a video game. I always wished that my life could have had purpose. Going to school when you’re young so that you can go to school when you’re a teen, to go to school as an adult, to get a job and live the rest of your life out paying bills and owning a house and driving to and from work and what have you isn’t the worst thing imaginable by any means. But it was always such a _boring_ thought—such a _normal_ thought. But now, I had been blessed with something surreal. I had a purpose now—an _interesting_ purpose. I think that’s why I trusted the Rose-Thorns so quickly. I _wanted_ to trust them. I _wanted_ to be in a war. It was a hell of a lot less boring than sitting at home, studying and watching TV; that was for sure. I think that’s why Silvara did it, too. She wanted something more interesting out of life. Something, as she said, “supernatural”. I think that’s what everyone wants. Everyone wants to lead an interesting life. Silvara and I were just two of the few who got the privilege. And now, on the day of my first mission, my first real day as a member of the hold, I’d be able to start my new, interesting, purposeful life!

            It had started off fun; Silvara and I met up with Lantigua and Silvara had managed to turn her summoning back into badge form. Due to the nature of my “summoning”, I couldn’t turn it back into a badge. Lantigua said that happens for some wielders, depending on the abilities that they wish for. I figured it was better this way; I never had to risk having my badge be destroyed.

After we all met up, we headed out of the hold, apparently named Rose-Thorn Hall, and we walked in a seemingly-random direction, across a grand and hilly plain, through knee-high grass. The Sun was shining in the bright, blue sky, and there was a cool breeze that blew the grass around in a hypnotic fashion, making waves of grass appear and disappear constantly, like the ground was shifting under our feet. It was all incredibly idyllic and beautiful.

We chatted about this and that on the way to the Shield-Arms’ hold. How school was going for Silvara and I, if we had any big plans now that we had our badges and knew all the things we knew, and so on. We learned, to our surprise, that Lantigua was just a normal teenager like us when she wasn’t at the hold. She went to a moderately-good school that was a few cities away from ours and lived in a moderately-happy household with a moderately-interesting family. She said that after she had been in the hold for more than a couple months, normal life was relaxing, but boring. She said it was fun to visit her friends and family and to learn some new stuff in school every now and again, but she also said that it got boring fast and she couldn’t stay back on Earth for more than a day or two at a time without just wanting to come back to the hold. And, now that a war was on the way, she had an excuse to stay here almost all the time. I had explained that, after the mission, I’d go back to Earth until after semi-formal; after that, I was probably just going to stick with the hold for a while. The hold needed me more than Earth did if we were on the verge of war. And it wasn’t like I was really ever gone from Earth anyways, so it didn’t matter much. Silvara said she was going to probably be in and out a lot; she said that she’d miss her friends too much if she was at the hold all the time but that she could, of course, be at the hold any time that we needed her there. After all, with our forces so low, amassing at a whopping _fifteen_ , we needed all the help we could get.

Then things weren’t so fun. In fact, they were dreadful. I had never been so bored in my _life_. We walked for _hours._ Five or six hours, Lantigua said. I got so bored that I ended up screwing around with my summoning for a while, just to see what kinds of ridiculous stuff I could come up with. And even _that_ got boring after about two or three hours. No matter what I thought up, though, none of it had nearly as much of an impact as that Silvara illusion I first made. Lantigua made sure to tell me that every single time I came up with something that was even mildly entertaining. The first couple of times that she said it, I felt really embarrassed for what had happened. After the fourth or fifth time, though, I just ended up taking it as a challenge. I tried to make more and more ridiculous things, when Lantigua made the suggestion that I just conjure up an illusion of her and sick it on Silvara for once. While the idea was funny, I didn’t really think that’d be good for my health, judging by the glare that Silvara shot me as soon as the words had left Lantigua’s mouth. And so, on we tread, for another long while, not really talking about much, and I had run out of things to conjure up. The worst part was that it never felt like we had actually _gone_ anywhere. Everything looked the same. It was just hills and tall grass in every direction, as far as the eye could see. Well, as far as the average eye could see, anyways.

Eventually, we stopped when Silvara said she saw something in the distance. _Far_ in the distance, so far that only Silvara could actually see it, thanks to her newfound gift.

“Yeah, I see like… a big building or something. Like a castle. I’m guessing that’s the hold?” Even she was squinting as it was too far to make out for either Lantigua or me.

Lantigua smiled and sat down in the grass. “Yeah, I figured we’d be coming up on it soon. Good eye, Vara.” She grinned up at Silvara, squinting as the Sun still shone down from just above the horizon.

When she sat down, I figured I’d follow suit. “We’re taking a break, then? I know I’m sick of walking by now.” I flopped backwards into the grass, letting the tall blades sweep over my arms and face. It was very soothing.

Lantigua took her jacket off and it transformed back into her badge. She put it into her pants pocket and crossed her legs, slouching. “Yeah, we’re good to rest a while. If we’re gonna be sneakin’ around, I’d rather do it at night. There’s less of a chance of getting caught, and it’s a lot easier to get away if we do.”

Silvara sat down now, too, legs outstretched forwards, one crossing over the other, her hands planted on the ground behind her to keep her upright. “I’m definitely not gonna complain about safe.” She chuckled. “Speaking of which, any specific kind of plan for getting out of trouble if we do get caught…?” She was looking directly at Lantigua now.

“Teleport back to the hold. We haven’t properly taught you how to teleport yet, but your badge has the emblem of a Rose on it for a reason. You stroke the emblem, and it’ll teleport you right to the throne room all on its own.”

I raised my hands above me and stared at them, mist trickling out ever so slightly, giving them an interesting kind of glow. “What the hell am I supposed to do, then?”

Lantigua winced. “Shit… I guess I kinda forgot that you ate your badge. Well, you’ve got illusions; make them think they’ve killed you and sneak away invisible or something.”

I swallowed hard at that. It didn’t really click until right then that our lives were at stake. I mean, I knew that our lives were on the line; after all, we were talking about war. But it hadn’t actually sunk in. I noticed that Silvara had tensed up a little as well at the mention of dying. Lantigua must have noticed because she continued.

“Look, guys. Don’t worry; this is a simple recon mission. You aren’t going to get hurt while I’m here. Tanny, you can cloak Vara and yourself, right?”

            “Uh… Yeah, I can.”

            “Good. Then if we get into any trouble, any at all, I want you to cloak Vara and yourself. I have my jacket, so I’ll be invisible, too. And they can’t hurt what they can’t see, right? Once you’re cloaked, run to a safe area. Vara can teleport back to the hold, and then you can leave a sign for me; conjure up a Rose and place it on the ground near where you’re hiding. I’ll find it, pick it up, and when you see it move, you can uncloak, and I’ll teleport you back to the hold myself. Sound good?”

            Back at Rose-Thorn Hall, Lantigua seemed like a hopelessly obnoxious flirt. But now, here, in the field, she was experienced, quick to think, and she had a better plan than most could have come up with on such short notice. It was relieving, to say the least, though I would definitely be taking the mission a lot more seriously now that I realized just what I had gotten myself into.

            Silvara seemed to have calmed down a fair bit and just nodded, while I gave a quick affirmative. At that moment, for whatever reason, I realized something. Well, I realized two things. One thing was that I was going to have to kill people. I figured I could handle it, though; I’ve never been one to get squeamish over such things; for the longest time, I wanted to be a police officer, and I was fine with occasionally having to shoot someone. The only reason I didn’t stick with law enforcement was because I was too lazy for it; I didn’t have the build. But no, the other thing I realized was far more important.

            “Uhm… Lan…”

            “What’s up, Tanny?” I wasn’t looking, since I was still on my back with the grass above me, but I knew that if I did look, I would have seen her knitted eyebrows. I could hear the confusion in her voice; I hadn’t been nearly this serious during the past two days. Hell, I may not have been this serious before in my entire life. “Is everything okay?”

            Even Silvara sounded worried. “What’s wrong?”

            I sat up and looked Lantigua right in the eyes. “I haven’t eaten in over two days. And I’m _still_ not hungry.”

            Silvara visibly deflated and face palmed as she realized I was just being an idiot and Lantigua broke into hysterics, clutching her stomach. After a moment of thought, however, Silvara also got a curious look on her face. “All silliness aside, he does have a point. Neither of us has eaten since we got here and I’m not hungry, either.”

            After a few more moments of laughing, Lantigua managed to calm herself down and instead just gave the occasional giggle as she spoke. “You don’t need anything like food or water while you’re here.” She seemed to think back on something for a moment before continuing. “Kai put it this way for me when I first started here. He said that the body you have on Earth is your actual, physical body. That’s the body that needs food and water and shelter. That’s the body that needs physical exercise and that tires out from things like walking and running. If you noticed, you’re probably not that tired from just walking around, are you?” Silvara and I both shook our heads as we looked down at our not-at-all-sore feet. “I told ya. Anyway, so, yeah, that’s your physical body. The body you have here is your mind, given form. Do you need to feed your mind? Or exercise your mind? Make sure it’s protected from the Sun or from too hot or too cold temperatures? No, you don’t. Or, at least, you don’t need to in the same sense as you would your body. The only thing that your mind and body _both_ need is sleep. And so, you do have to sleep while you’re here. And instead of physical exercise, I’d advise doing puzzles of some nature or learning in this body. It’ll have the same effect that weight-lifting and jogging would have on Earth.”

            I nodded along as she explained and Silvara seemed to understand as well. I suppose that was why they wanted to recruit me. I didn’t need to be physically fit to be martially apt here. I just had to have a strong mind. “Wait, so that means… Any injuries we sustain here—”

            “—will not be taken home with you.” Lantigua finished for me. “As far as recovering from them goes, you just need sleep. You can literally sleep off any ailment you receive from The Realm.”

            Silvara perked up at that, but I noticed what she didn’t. “You can sleep off any ailment… but not death.”

            Lantigua nodded. “Well, naturally… if your mind dies, your body dies with it. If you die here, your physical body, back on Earth, will no longer have anything running it, and it’ll shut down immediately.”

            That got Silvara’s attention, though she wasn’t too upset by it; the rule of thumb had always been to simply not die; nothing had really changed, for either of us; it was just unnerving to have it said out loud.

            _Maybe we were too quick to jump right into all of this._

_Maybe we were. But do you actually regret it?_

_I suppose I don’t, no._

_Then why are we even having this conversation?_

_I just…_

_You’re scared, I know. I get it. I’m you, so I’m scared, too. But I’m the way better version of you, so I’m confident that everything will be alright anyways. Honestly, like you said before in one of your monologues, the only thing everyone wants is an interesting life. Sure, we probably jumped head-first into this a little quickly, but it’ll be better for us in the long run than wasting away on Earth would have been._

_I suppose you’re right…_

_Damn right I am. And I’m you, so you’re right, too. Just relax, keep a clear mind, and don’t make any stupid mistakes._

_Ping._

The familiar sound snapped me out of my stupor and when I stopped… talking to myself… I noticed how dark it had gotten. The Sun was already just above the horizon when we got here, so I supposed it shouldn’t have taken that long. I sat up and noticed that Lantigua was already standing and she had her jacket back on. Silvara was standing now, too, and she held her hand out to me. I gripped it in mine and she pulled me up to my feet. The grass we were resting on all righted itself, not leaving a bend or crevice in a single blade, as though we had never even been there, and then we continued on our way. As soon as the hold came into sight, Lantigua hailed us and told us to wait. She drew up her hood and— _ping—_ vanished.

            _So that’s how that works._

_I wonder if it would work on other people…_

_Don’t be getting any ideas, now._

_Yeah, ‘cause we totally can’t_ already _turn invisible, dumbass._

Not a moment after I finished calling myself stupid— _ping_ —Lantigua reappeared, her hood drawn back down. “Alright, you two, here’s what we’re gonna do. There aren’t too many of them over there.”

            _She made it all the way over there and back already?_

_Invisibility and speed were her two traits, remember?_

_Oh. Right, I guess that makes sense._

“So, we’re gonna get close, stealth, get closer, and eavesdrop on as many conversations as we can. Chances are, if the armies aren’t outside, they’re inside, resting for whatever’s to come. If that’s the case, the night guards are gonna be peeved about having to pull guard duty while everyone sleeps and at least a few of them will probably spill something about whatever they’re planning.”

            I nodded in understanding. “Idle hands breed active mouths.”

            _I bet you wish her mouth was idle so her hands could be more active._

 _Literally_ no one _asked you._

_Hey, I’m you, remember? If I’m thinking it, so are you._

_Shut up._

I felt Silvara prod my shoulder with her elbow. “Tanis?” She was looking to me for some kind of affirmation.

            I just scratched my head and tried to play it cool. “Sorry, got lost in thought for a sec. What’s up?”

            Silvara sighed. “Are you ready to go?”

            I shook my head to clear it. “Uh, yeah, sure, let’s go.” Lantigua was already a few steps ahead of us by then and now that she was sure I was paying attention again, Silvara started on her way as well. I quickly matched their pace and we headed for Sword-Arm Hall—yeah, the Shield-Bearers’ hold is named Shield-Bearer Hall; it is a pattern, good job figuring it out.

            _I wonder if we’ll get into any fights…_

_Maybe we will, maybe we won’t. What’s it matter?_

_I don’t know, I’m just saying, if we do…_

_If we do, you’ll kick some serious ass with some serious ass to kick with you._

_Now you’re just trying too hard._

_I know… I’m sorry…_

            I snorted to myself and almost bumped into Silvara when I finally realized that she and Lantigua had stopped walking. Lantigua was a few steps ahead of the two of us and I didn’t understand why we were stopping, until I looked at Silvara. She was staring at something. Something was up ahead of us. And I mean _up_ ahead of us. I went to follow her gaze and realized we were just about at the foot of the hold now. We were at the foot. The peak was _up_. _Way up_ , almost above the clouds. The clouds, I realized, that were only above the hold. The sky had been clear the whole way here and the grass had seemed infinite. But now, the grass thinned out and gradually grew shorter as it approached the hold, until there was nothing but dry, cracked ground ahead of us. And above us, there were dark, brooding clouds. They were the kinds of clouds that just screamed _storm_. Now, Rose-Thorn Hall was a pretty big place. You could easily fit twenty thousand people in their comfortably. You couldn’t give them all their own rooms but you could fit them in. This place, however… It looked like you could give each of those twenty thousand their own _throne room_ , giant double doors and all, and then invite over another hundred thousand or so to put in all the other rooms. I could honestly say I had never seen anything like it. And it was all stonework. There seemed to be three main towers near the center of everything, all three of them enormous at the base and climbing up to penetrate the heavens. The three spires had small bridges between them, connecting the towers every fifty feet or so. I assumed that was a good way to mark every floor or every other floor. I could easily count thirty of the bridges before things got too high up to see clearly. And when I say they were at the center of everything, I was merely speculating. There seemed to be an entire city surrounding the three spires, with at least ten more spires scattered about. These spires were significantly shorter—I could actually see the tops of them, for starters—and they were barely half the width. They all sat along some kind of circular rule around the three main spires, like guards, with hundreds of small buildings in between each of them, like pebbles. And, as icing on the cake, there was a round wall, running the entire circumference of the hold, with the occasional gate for entry, each guarded by four or more people. There were turrets along the top of the wall as well, where countless hidden guards could be waiting.

            _What the hell did we get ourselves into?_

_Y’know, I don’t even have a witty rebuttal for this one._

_That’s comforting._

Before I could say anything, Silvara squeaked. “We’re going in _there_?!”

            Lantigua nodded solemnly. “Yep, we are. I know it looks intimidating, but trust me, I’ve been in here loads of times. Their guards are dumb as hell—that’s why they’re simply gate guards—and the place is so big that the one time they _did_ notice me, I was able to duck between a few alleys and they completely lost me.”

            That relaxed me quite a bit. I mean, it made sense, after all. There were only four, maybe five hundred people in the place to begin with. Suddenly, the size of the hold made a lot less sense.

            “Lan… You said the Sword-Arms had around four hundred members, right? Why would they ever need a place this big?”

            Lantigua chuckled darkly. “I said they had four hundred wielders. But they also have tens of thousands of guards. They aren’t armed with badges, like us, but they’re combat-trained and they know their way around a battlefield. They usually arm themselves with spears, occasionally they have swords. The lucky ones get crossbows.”

            _What the hell is this, the Renaissance?_

“None of them have guns…?”

            Lantigua hummed. “No, guns are useless. You can’t break a summoning except for with another summoning. My simple jacket is enough to block bullets and anyone like Sylar who has agility and slowed perception, or like you, Vara, who has quick reflexes or good eyes, can easily render bullets useless. Just start tossing summoning’s around. Hell, Tanis, you could even just conjure up an illusory wall of air and the bullets would disintegrate on contact. No, the guards are just there to look intimidating. Sure, if there are enough of them, you could end up overwhelmed, and a few of them might get a couple good hits in on you, but even then, pretty well any wielder could escape.”

            “Then what’s the point?”

            “The point, young Tanis, as I said before, is intimidation.” She grinned. “They’re also there to guard against other non-threats from other holds. A lot of the time, the Shield-Bearers and Sword-Arms will simply send scouts that have no badges to spy on the other holds. The wielders of those holds have their guards convinced that they’re too important to go on scouting missions or other ‘menial’ things like them.” She did a good job of not showing it, but I could hear the venom in her words. After all, her main job was scouting, and she was good at it, too. “Essentially, they’re just a bunch of pawns to be pushed around by their would-be leaders.”

            Silvara spoke up this time. “Seems like a pretty easy society to run. You just offer them off-Earth immortality where they don’t need to worry about money, food, water, or shelter, and then you tell them that, for your ‘kindness’, all they have to do is occasionally stand outside the walls and look scary.”

            Lantigua nodded. “You’re an anti-military type, huh?”

            Silvara’s face hardened. “I hate people who kill just because they’re told to.”

            I noticed her eyes begin to soften and I knew the tears would well up sooner rather than later, so I put a hand on her shoulder to bring her back from whatever memories she was reliving. Silvara’s brother had went to military school as soon as he was of age and in his first three months of service, he’d been sent on some peacekeeping mission or another. One day, two years ago, Silvara had busted into my living room—as everyone knew back home, I was always in my house—and she came scrambling over to me and threw herself into my arms, sobbing. All I heard between her ragged breaths was “Liam”, over and over. Apparently, while him and his squad-mates were escorting a group of civilians to a nearby trade-post to get some much-needed supplies, a group of mercenaries—hired guns—had showed up and started pumping rounds into everything that stood. Automatic weapons blazing away, Silvara’s brother tried his best to subdue the men, but they shot him down just the same, or so the remaining member of his group reported. He said his death was almost instant—it was the most optimistic thing to come from the whole situation—but they never found the body. He was officially reported MIA, but everyone accepted the fact that he was probably dead. It had been two years, after all. It’s a horrible thing, though, not having anything physical to mourn for.

When she felt my hand on her shoulder, she relaxed visibly; I felt her shoulders slump, her eyes closed, and she took a slow, ragged breath to calm her nerves. After a moment or two, she opened her eyes, looked over at me and put a hand over mine. “Thanks, Tanis; I’m alright.”

            I gave her shoulder a quick squeeze and she pulled her hand away. “Any time…” I smiled and she smiled too, and then looked back to Lantigua.

            “Sorry, I’m good to go now,” she said, her tone completely neutral, devoid of its usual spirit. She always got like this whenever she was reminded of her brother, but she’d be alright in a few minutes.

            “I’m not going to pry, but if this is going to be too much for you—”

            I help up a hand before Lantigua said something she might regret. “No, don’t worry; she’s good.” I gave her a stern nod, silently promising I’d explain later and it seemed to be enough as she turned around.

            “If you say so… Well, let’s go, then. We have some work to do.” She started off toward the hold and as soon as she did, Silvara followed suit. I quickly followed up behind her and then we were on our way once more.

            Just before the grass ended, and the dry ground began, Lantigua stopped us and— _ping_ —popped her hood. She vanished, some dust became unsettled where she had stood, and then— _ping_ —she was there again, her hood down.

            She turned to me and nodded. “Now is as good a time as any, Tanny. Any further and you might get spotted.”

            I simply nodded and then blue mist started leaving my hands. In the dark of the night, it seemed almost invisible, and soon, as it swirled around Silvara and me, we became invisible, too. Of course, I could see through my own illusions, but others apparently couldn’t. I could see Silvara—though she had an ethereal blue glow to her now—looking around, confused, so I simply grabbed her hand and spoke softly. “Silvara, can you hear me?” She nodded. “You can’t see me, but I can still see you. Just follow my lead, and stay quiet, alright?” She nodded again and relaxed.

            Lantigua was able to hear me as well, and she turned to the general area my voice sounded from. “Okay, c’mon, you two. I’ll stay visible unless there are guards nearby, so just follow my directions, alright?”

            Silvara and I both nodded.

            _…_

_Oh, fuck, duh._

“Yeah, we got it, Lan. We’ll be right behind you.”

            “Alright, good, let’s go.” She turned around and headed straight for the gate.

            The gate was a classically medieval rise-and-fall, cast-iron gate, built into the stonework around it. It stood about twenty feet tall, the wall itself about triple that height. Just outside the gate were four armoured guards, all armed with chest-height spears. They stood on opposite sides of the gate, two to each side, and they looked like they were extremely bored. One of them was leaning against his spear, his eyes half-lidded, and one of the other ones was actually leaning up against the wall beside the gate, looking to be taking a nap. As we got a little closer, I heard, more than saw, Lantigua draw some small blade— _ping—_ and then the guards started dropping like flies, silently, and without enough time to even raise their voices. _Ping_. It took the guards less time to hit the ground than it took me to realize that Lantigua had gone incognito, and by then, she had already returned, the quiet noise of metal sliding against metal signalling that she had put whatever blade she had used back into its hidden sheathe.

            She turned back to Silvara and me and waved us forward, then started toward the gate. We followed after her and as we approached, I heard her curse under her breath and whisper “they moved it again” when Silvara stopped walking. I realized we had reached the corpses of the four guards and I dreaded what came next. I looked to Silvara and realized, to my surprise, that she didn’t seem off-put in the slightest. In fact, she looked more intrigued than anything. I wanted to ask why, but I also didn’t want to make any noise, lest there be more guards around, so I simply followed her gaze; that’s when I realized why she simply looked so interested.

            _There’s no blood._

_Well, Lan did say that these bodies are physical incarnations of our minds, right?_

_So, what, minds don’t bleed, I guess?_

_Man, your guess is as good as mine._

I shook my head at the shitty joke, grinning.

            _Is that a smile~?_

_Oh, shut up._

After losing a mental conversation with myself, Lantigua whispered to Silvara and me from a seemingly random spot along the wall. “Okay, you two. I’ve found the switch.” She gestured to a small slit in the wall, near the base on the left side. “Tanny—” At some point during our walk to the hold, Lantigua had apparently come up with the pet name to try and bother me, so I took to calling her Lan almost immediately after. “—I’m going to need you to cloak these bodies. When I open the gate, other guards will come, and if they see the corpses of their friends, the whole hold will go on high-alert.”

            I looked down at the bodies and back up to Lantigua. And then I grinned.

            “Honestly, Lan, I think I can do you one better.”

            I held out my free hand and the blue mist began to cascade out from it like a wave of tendrils, slowly wrapping around the corpses at my feet. While I was working my magic—yes, that was a pun—I noticed that Lantigua was still just staring expectantly at where my voice had sounded from.

            _Are we the only ones who can see the mist?_

_Ask questions later, I think you should focus._

_R-Right._

After a few moments of letting the mist gather over the four guards, it began to seep into their bodies, and then they began to glow that same blue, ethereal glow that Silvara was exhibiting.

            Lantigua sighed. “I thought you said you’d ‘do me one better’, not ‘do the exact thing that you asked’—”

            I grinned maniacally as the bodies began to rise.

            “Sorry, Lan, I couldn’t hear you over the sound of the guards not being dead.”

            She shook her head, trying to stifle a giggle. “So you’ve got some neat tricks; don’t get a big head on me.”

            _Don’t say a fucking word._

_Well, I wasn’t going to go as far as fucking, but hey, man, you’re the boss._

_I hate you._

_I hate you, too, baby._

For the sake of not seeming like a madman, I repressed my groan and simply returned my attention to the task at hand. “Anyway, that’ll keep the other guards from getting suspicious. We’ll just send one of ‘them’ in to report something they saw, and we’ll sneak in right beside him. The other guards won’t suspect a thing.”

            “Not bad, Tanny. Alright, let’s do it. Everyone keep silent.” Silvara and I stepped up to where Lantigua was and she— _ping_ —pulled her hood up, disappearing from sight, but not from sound, as I heard her unsheathe her boot-knife and slip it into the slit in the wall. There was a faint _click_ and then a metallic stress-groan as a wheel of chains somewhere or another began turning, the gate in front of us lifting slowly. I positioned one of the illusory guards so that they were facing the gate, near the slit, and then we walked through.

            On the other side of the gate, there was immediately a building. It stood about nine feet tall with a flat roof-top and, as with everything else we had seen thus far, was made of thick, gray stone. There were two small, square holes along the wall we were facing—windows, I assumed—and there was a heavy-looking wooden door, about six feet in height and three in width, just off to our left. There were identical buildings to either side of it, and more identical buildings the further you went. There were gaps between each building, just wide enough for people to fit through single-file. I peered through the little alley nearest to us and noticed there were more identical buildings as you went deeper.

            _This place is like a friggin’ maze._

_That’s probably the point. And, as you noticed, the roofs are all flat on top, so you could position people up above anyone trying to make it through the hold and just start raining fire on them without your troops being in much danger. No doubt, the rest of the hold is built in the same kind of way, the buildings simply getting taller as you go deeper, if what we saw outside was any indication._

_Huh, a city-sized fortress that simply rains death on any unwanted guests. Neat._

_Yeah, put your brain boner away; remember you’re in the middle of said fortress now._

_Actually, we’re just on the edge. The middle is a long way from here._

_You know what I mean; don’t get distracted and keep your eyes on the sky._

_Yeah, yeah, I’ve got it; do you have to ruin everything?_

_No, just the things that_ you _think are fun._

Thankfully, that conversation literally took place at the speed of thought, so when I snapped out of my reverie, nothing important had happened. I assumed that Lantigua figured there wouldn’t be any guards around if none of them were here yet, because I heard her re-sheathe her little knife and then I saw her pull her hood down as she came back into view.

            “Alright, Tanny, you’re still there, right?”

            “Yeah, what’s up?”

            I heard Silvara mutter something about being here, too, but ignored her for now.

            “Well… We may have an issue.”

            “It’s too quiet?”

            She laughed openly, not even trying to keep her voice down. The only reason I didn’t drop the veil of invisibility as soon as she did—I mean, obviously she no longer cared if we were going to be noticed or not—was because it actually would have taken effort to dispel it, whereas keeping it up required no conscious thought.

_Why don’t you just admit it’s because you just don’t want to let go of Vara’s hand?_

_Because no one fucking asked you, that’s why._

_You’re an idiot._

_Shut up…_

“Yeah, normally guards would have swarmed the gates by now. I’ve done this enough times to know the patterns. They do it the exact same way every time.”

“What if they’re just switching tactics?”

“I doubt it. Trust me; I’ve been doing this for a while. Even if they were waiting in ambush, they would have done _something_ by now.” She grinned a little maliciously now. “So, y’know, you can call back the illusion now. Or are you simply content with holding Vara’s hand until we get back to the hold?” She winked—not subtly, might I add.

I just sighed and dropped the veil.

_Don’t even start with me._

Silvara giggled when she saw the expression on my face, which just added to the blushing, and she gave my hand a quick squeeze before letting go and leaning up against one of the walls, her arms crossed. She cleared her throat loudly, not having spoken in a while, and then looked over to Lantigua. “So, if there are no guards to worry about, what do we do now? The plan was to eavesdrop, right? So…?”

Lantigua cast her gaze toward the ground, knitted her brows, and then looked back up. “Alright, if there are no guards around, our only real way to get any info is to start searching these buildings for any kinds of documents.”

This time, it was my turn to knit my brows together. “Lan, you can’t be serious. How many buildings do you expect us to be able to go through before more guards come? I mean, the hold obviously didn’t just get rid of all their guards overnight—they’re all either deeper into the city, having some kind of meeting or protecting something—or anything else that could possibly be ridiculously cliché—or they’ve headed out to do something. We don’t know how long they’ve been gone or how long it’ll take them to come back. There’s no way we’ll be able to find anything without either getting caught or taking too long.

She smirked. “That is, unless _I_ do the searching.”

I shook my head and chuckled. “It’d get the job done, but I feel like it would defeat the purpose of this whole ‘initiation’ thing.”

“Oh, no one actually cares about the ‘initiation’. You’ve got my recommendation anyways; you were smart about the guards at the gate, and you stuck to the plan until it fell apart.” She looked to Silvara now. “And you were even more serious about it; you kept quiet from the moment you were told to until the moment you were told you could speak again, with no complaints, and you kept your mind on the mission the whole time; you were observant and you were focused. You two did great for your first mission. But hey, shit happens, and like you said, Tanny, we don’t know how much time we’ve got, and we need the info.”

Silvara and I smiled at the praise and nodded at her conclusion.

Realizing that neither of them was going to say any more, I decided to. “Silvara, you’re our eyes. If you can climb up the hold’s wall, keep one eye on the alleys and one on the grass. If you see anything, let me know. If these guys come back while we’re still here, I’ll have a nice surprise for them.” I turned to Lantigua now. “If you hear any kind of commotion, wrap up what you’re doing and get to me; I’ll be up on this building here.” I pointed to the roof of the building that we had been standing in front of since we entered through the gate.

Lantigua smiled and nodded— _ping_ —pulling up her hood, and vanishing.

_I think she likes it when you take control like that, “Tanny”._

_Do you really not have anything better to do than make sex jokes?_

_You’re talking to yourself, remember?_

_I… UGH, God damn it!_

My musings were cut short when I heard a door, then a second, a third, and so on, open and shut, faster than I could even keep track; Lantigua was going at about a building or two per second, it seemed. The noise from the doors wasn’t quiet by any means, but it wasn’t too loud, either; if you could imagine closing an average text book really fast, over and over again, then you’d have the gist of the noise level. It wouldn’t be so loud as to alert anyone further into the hold.

Silvara nodded, her face controlled and determined, as she began climbing a nearby ladder that, conveniently, led directly up to the top of the wall.

I was the only one not yet in place, so I headed into the building we were standing in front of and looked around for stairs or a ladder or something. Unfortunately, I found nothing. There was literally nothing. There were no furnishings or beds or stairs anywhere in sight in the whole building. It was just an empty, stone box, with a door, two little square-cut windows, and—

_A ceiling hatch! I’m surprised everything’s going according to my plan. There’s no way I’d have been able to climb the side of one of these buildings; they’re too smooth._

I positioned myself just under the hatch and jumped up, grabbing the little metal ring that hung from it and then let my weight pull the wood free from its place. As the space opened up, a short ladder unfolded from the hatch and gave me easy access to the roof of the building. I climbed up and looked around. The roof was made of the same stone that everything else was and was just as empty as the inside of the building had been. I walked to the edge of the roof closest to Silvara. The roof of the building, and all the buildings around me, I realized, had two feet high stone walls along the edges, probably so that the people on the roofs wouldn’t fall off too easily and so that the people on the ground had a harder time hitting the people on the roofs with whatever their weapons of choice may be.

I turned to face the rest of the hold and, while I could see a lot farther than before, I still felt incredibly small. I could more-clearly see the towers now. They were still huge, and I was still tiny in comparison. I heard a _ping_ from behind me and turned around. I looked up a bit and saw that Silvara was at the top of the wall now, bow in hand, an arrow of light sparking into existence as her fingers approached the drawstring area of the bow. She had been looking towards the hold, as I was, when I initially looked up, but was now keeping an eye on the grass outside, presumably not having seen anything of importance coming from deeper in the hold.

_You ready to get this shit started?_

_…_

_…_

_…Oh, were you talking to me?_

_I swear to God, if you weren’t me, I’d fucking kill you._

_Tanis, if you’re going to keep up these suicide threats, we’re going to have to get you counselling. I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t around anymore._

_Hopefully, wither and die with me. Let’s just get started, you asshat._

When there was no response, I simply held my hands out over the edge of the building and let the blue mist pour out into the alley. As more flowed out, the mist began to cover the ground more evenly, spreading outward into the other alleys.

_You think this’ll work?_

_That depends on only one thing, really._

_What’s that?_

_Well, now is as good a time as any to find out if we’re right._

I turned my head up to where Silvara was standing and called out. “Hey, Vara!”

She turned around and looked down to me. “What’s up, Tanis?”

“Do you see this?” I gestured towards the ground in front of the building, where a few feet’s worth of mist had piled up now, and had spread to a few nearby alleys.

She giggled briefly. “I see you standing there, holding your hands out like a dork, if that’s what you mean.”

I grinned. “Never mind, keep your eyes sharp.”

She just gave me a confused look and shook her head, turning back to watching the grass outside the hold.

I slowly strolled along the perimeter of the roof, arms outstretched, blue mist pouring from my hands and into the alleyways below. After a while of doing that—and I mean a _while_ ; Lantigua was almost half done now, from what I could tell—the mist had grown to about two meters in height and stretched throughout all the alleys I could see from my vantage point and then some. A lot of mist had also gathered outside of the gate.

_It seems there’s no limit to this mist._

_The only drawback is that there’s mist at all; it takes a while for it to travel, but once it’s where you need it, you have free reign to do pretty well anything, and the actual transformation of the mist is almost instant._

_It’ll definitely be useful, and I plan on proving it as soon as a rank of guards decides to step near that gate._

I held my hands up higher and directed some mist up Silvara’s way. I watched, mesmerized as it slithered up the wall and flowed freely around her feet, gathering and spreading like it had in the alleys, though I was keeping it from falling down from either side of the wall. After it was about a meter high, I decided it was enough and the mist stopped leaking from my hands.

I stood, looking over the magnitude of my work and smiled.

 _This… is going to be fucking_ awesome _._

_I think the word you’re looking for is “overkill”._

_Nope, I’m not even letting you get to me this time. I’m too content._

_Admittedly, this is some pretty nice work. You’re going to impress the hell out of two certain girls. You might impress some of the other members of the hold, too, but whatever._

_Oh, shush, you. This isn’t for them. Hell, this isn’t even for me. This, my conceited little troll, is simply for_ **fun** _._

            Another twenty minutes or so passed when I felt a slight shift in air-pressure. I had been sitting for a while now, cross-legged on the roof, looking up at Silvara while I waited for some kind of “they’re coming” signal. At the slight shift, I casually let myself fall onto my back and gaze straight up at the sky, which was still, well, black as night.

            “Hey, Lan~”

            Lantigua pulled her hood down and appeared before me. She looked at me with a mixture of confusion and amusement. “How did you know?”

            “You were going fast enough that you had built up some air in front of you. When you stopped, it finally got to rush forward, directly into my back.”

            She huffed indignantly, crossing her arms. “Smartass. You had the opportunity to say something cool, and instead you just gave me a straight-up answer. You’ve got a lot to learn, kid.” She grinned, making a _tsk_ noise. I chuckled heartily and she continued. “Anyway, apparently they took their troops to the Shield-Bearers’ hold. I found a few letters of instruction from their King. They left early yesterday morning, and they definitely didn’t make much progress on their assault—the Shield-Bearers represent defense for a reason, after all—which means they’ll be back here in the next hour or less; we should go while we don’t have targets painted on our backs.”

            “See… We _could_ leave… or we could wait for them to get here and put on a nice show for them.” I grinned up at her and she gave me a quizzical look back. “Look, I have a plan, alright? Actually, I have a series of plans, already. I haven’t just been twiddling my thumbs up here while you were doing your snooping. And trust me when I say that we can teach these bastards never to paint a target on our back after what I plan on doing to them tonight.”

            Lantigua looked down at me, waiting for me to elaborate. I could see the gleam of curiosity behind her eyes and the confusion everywhere else.

            “Just trust me, okay? And you _MUST NOT_ get off the rooftops until I give the signal. Stay up here and just play along—oh, and try to look as intimidating as you can! That’s key, here. Maybe, like… start quick-stepping between them and cutting them down or something, if you think it’ll have an impact. But wait until I give the signal, alright?” I lifted my legs above my torso and thrust them forward, using the momentum to launch myself upright—you know; that thing that people do all the time in movies during a fight-scene, when they’ve been knocked down and they want to get up quickly.

            Lantigua just sighed. “I know you’re smart, Tanny, so I’m going to give you a chance here. But if you think something—anything—isn’t going quite how you planned, tell me immediately, and I’ll just zap you back to the hold, alright?”

            “Alright, Lan, and… thanks; you won’t regret this.” I smiled, turning around to face the gate.

            She walked up to my left side and put her hands on the wall that enclosed the roof, leaning onto it, then turned her head to look at me. “So, what’s the signal?”

            I smirked. “Oh, you’ll know it when you see it.”

            On that ominous note, Silvara looked down on us and called out. “I see them! What do you want me to do?”

            “Just keep on standing up there, looking pretty, and when I give the signal, start raining arrows down on them.” I conjured a classically-RPG wooden staff in my right hand and twirled it around for good measure, placing the butt against the roof.

            She looked out to the approaching mass of soldiers and then hesitantly looked back down to me. “If you say so, Tanis; what’s the signal?”

            I chuckled. “Oh, you’ll know it when you see it. Just be ready to start dropping arrows, alright?” I smiled up at her and she confidently nodded back, turning back around, bow at the ready, and an arrow of pure light notched.

            I headed toward the hatch on the roof and started climbing down. Halfway down the ladder, Lantigua got a look on her face and started to follow me when she spoke. “I thought you said we needed to stay up here, on the rooftops?”

            I grinned. “No, I said _you_ need to stay up here on the rooftops. You’ll see why soon enough. Just give it a few minutes.”

            As I descended into the empty building, and, effectively, into the engulfing blue mist that now filled it to the brim, I began to feel a sense of giddiness take over.

            _I think it goes without saying that this is by far the coolest fucking thing I’ve ever done._

_Don’t get ahead of yourself now; we still need to see if it’ll work the way we want it to. None of this has been tested yet._

_Well, consider this an active field-test, then._

Staff still in hand, I pushed my way through the door and walked out of the building, the mist completely unfazed by my passage through it. I stalked over to the gate and stood right in the middle of its entrance, daring the soldiers to tell me to move. It was an odd thing I noticed just then; I could see the mist really clearly, like a thick, blue fog made of glowing strands of hair, though it didn’t seem to inhibit my sight at all; I could see right through it all, and everything on the other side of it was as clear as day, even in the dark of night. The point was, even though I was surrounded by mist on all sides, I could still clearly see the approaching ranks of soldiers, and I knew that, soon, they would see me as well. And I was ready for them.

            As they approached, the soldiers began to slow in their march until they were just at the edge of the mist. They were all wearing gold-painted plate armour of some kind, most of them wielding spears, some with bows, all with sword-belts strapped to their sides.

            One soldier, a red feather sticking from his helmet marking him as unique among the ranks, stepped forward and called out with a thunderous voice. “ **WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT BUSINESS DO YOU HAVE HERE, INTRUDER?** ”

            I casually twirled my staff around in a flourish, and then slammed the butt into the cracked earth. Then, I called out in an equally thunderous voice. “ ** _I AM THE ROSE-THORN TANIS HAVEN. AND YOU. SHALL. NOT_** —”

            I was cut off when an arrow zipped past my head and I felt a sting on my cheek. I heard some of the soldiers snickering and saw the feather-capped one grin, even from that distance.

            _Fine! You asshats wanna play with fire? I’ll GIVE you fire!”_

As I felt the pain sink in, I decided a different approach would better suit the situation. I twirled my staff around and pointed it directly at their apparent leader, who, when stepping forward, had made the grave mistake of crossing the border into my mist. “ ** _ABRA CADABRA, MOTHERFUCKERS!!!_** ”

            I snapped my fingers and all of the mist in every alley and outside the gate, two meters high in every direction, and high enough to completely engulf their leader, even this far out, instantly burst into flame. I could see the soldiers through the fire and they could see me, but they could no longer see their leader; he had instantly disintegrated when the hold erupted. The entire rank began panicking. They had believed the lie I set out for them. And now it was time for the fun to begin.

I had used some of the mist around Silvara to cloak her before the soldiers had gotten too close, so none of the soldiers could find any target or point of focus besides me. The rest of the mist around her, however, was still idle, as was all the mist inside the buildings. I laughed as hard and as loud as I could, making a show of my staff burning up in the fire as I arched my back and howled a barking, shrieking kind of laugh to the heavens. I hung limply for a moment, bent over backwards, my arms swaying loosely at my sides, and then I straightened, a malicious smile gracing my lips as I stalked forward, toward the front-line spearmen.

I was a mere few meters from one of them now, when I screamed out in a deep, rattling, almost demonic voice. “ **YOU FUCKED WITH THE WRONG HOLD.** ”

The spearmen flinched back at that, and then took a few steps back as I leaned forward, eyes locked on one in particular. And then I charged, arms out, baring my teeth, growling, the light of the fire casting flickering shadows across my face. A few of them panicked and backpedalled but one of them seemed to have managed to keep at least some semblance of his cool. He thrust his spear outward and caught me right in the stomach. I made a pained gurgle and then slumped against his spear, my arms dangling at my sides once more, forcing him to hold me up; I honestly hadn’t been expecting the front-line to be so bold. I suppose that was a mistake on my part, but I would know better in the future. I slowly lifted my head, the devilish grin still plastered across my face. _Now_ the spearman was losing his cool. I reached out and grabbed the spear with both hands, and then pulled, hard, forcing it farther into my stomach. _Now_ the spearman was shitting his pants—well, figuratively speaking; you can’t actually take a shit in The Realm, but whatever. I pulled it farther and farther in, bringing the spearman closer to me. I heard the spear exit through my back with a nasty squelch as the spearman’s face reached mine. I could hear his breathing speed up as I closed the gap between us, leaning down, but he did nothing, so I tore out his throat with my teeth. As soon as I felt the flesh break free, I pulled away from him, tilted my head back and made a show of rabidly swallowing the chunk of skin. Once I had gotten it down, I looked ahead of me. The rest of the soldiers had become paralyzed with fear now as the spearman who had stabbed me fell to the ground, his spear still sticking out from my gut.

I grinned as wide as I could to the remaining ranks and spoke, in that guttural voice I had used before. “ **HE WAS A GOOD APPETIZER…** ” I removed my grin and replaced it with a dangerous frown. “ **BUT WHERE’S MY MAIN COURSE?!** ”

I heard a few of the soldiers start retching—dry heaving, mind you, given the nature of The Realm, but they had been made sick nonetheless. It brought me more joy than I could possibly explain. I grabbed hold of the spear again and pushed it the rest of the way through, reaching around behind myself to pull it out. I tossed it to the ground and then snapped my focus to a random soldier, tilting my head slowly to one side. “ **DID YOU WANT TO BE NEXT…?** ”

He took a couple of steps back and then I charged him as well, but two more spearmen intercepted me, two more spears finding their way into my already-opened gut. I threw my head back and shrieked in pain, then looked down on the two who had stabbed me yet again and spoke just loud enough for the soldiers around us to hear. “ **I GUESS YOU TWO WILL HAVE TO DO.** ” As soon as I said it, though, they both pushed their spears forward, making them collide inside of my stomach instead of going deeper, and I couldn’t get any closer to either of them. So, I brought my arms down on either of their spears and they both snapped in half. The two soldiers looked down on their spears, now tipped with a different kind of sharp end, but before they could do anything, I rushed them, grabbing them both by the open visors of their helmets and hauling them down to where the jagged ends of their broken spears were jutting from my stomach. I impaled both of them right between the eyes, a pleasing crack and squelch following. I noticeably shuddered in delight as I dropped both of their corpses to the cold ground. “ **ANY MORE HEROES IN THE CROWD…?** ”

A few of the soldiers had paced around me to try and close me in by that point, but the flames had died down significantly at this point, so some of them just dropped whatever heavier weapons they were holding and booked it to the gate. I simply began to howl in laughter again. “ **DOES ANYONE ELSE WISH TO RETREAT?! ARE THERE MORE COWARDS THAN SOLDIERS TO BE FOUND HERE?!** ”

A trickle more of soldiers fled the scene and I barked another short laugh. “ **NOW THAT WE’VE DECIDED WHO WILL BE STAYING, I THINK IT’S TIME TO TRULY GET STARTED!** ” The remaining soldiers readied their weapons and the ones behind me stood firm as well. They seemed confident that if they simply all rushed me at once, they’d be able to take me down for good.

And they might have been right. But I sure as hell wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction without putting up a good fight.

I unceremoniously ripped the two spears out of my gut and chucked them blindly at the soldiers behind me. I heard some of their feet shift across the dry ground and I smirked. Then, I burst into illusory flame and charged into the mass of them, picking a soldier at random and jumping at her, wrapping my limbs around her and dragging her to the ground, the fire melting away her armour and subsequently, scalding her skin. Her screams were as much music to my ears as were the furious cries of a few more of the soldiers as they charged me for once and I felt at least seven different spears carve their ways into my torso, and a few more into my legs, and I hung my head back and started shrieking and laughing all at the same time. Then, the fire around me began to intensify and my flesh began to glow a bright red, like molten rock. And then, I exploded. The explosion blew the woman under me to pieces, her severed limbs charred with liquid metal cooling against them. The force of the explosion also served to knock back some of the soldiers who had charged me, and a few of the spears that had been embedded in my flesh had found new marks after that as well, impaling three or four different soldiers, one of them having been just unlucky enough to get hit with two spears at the same time.

Even with their heavy losses, the soldiers held their remaining spears and bows above their heads and cheered, their enemy vanquished, and the fire seeming to retract and dissipate, as though verifying their victory. And then the unthinkable happened. I appeared from the retracting flames, wooden staff in hand once more, grinning as maliciously as before. The only mark on my entire body was the gash on my cheek from that initial arrow. I heard a few mutterings of “impossible” and some slightly more depressing things along the lines of “we’re getting what we deserve for leaving our families behind on Earth” and I just shook my head and raised my voice. “ **DID YOU REALLY THINK IT WOULD BE THAT EASY?!** ”

The soldiers readied themselves again, though they were almost all shaking and uncertain, their resolves cut down and their morale beaten into the ground. And then I walked out of the gate again. A second me, I mean. That me had the same staff and the same scar on its cheek; it cracked its neck loudly as it stalked up beside me. And then another emerged from the flames and the flames began to grow outward again. And then another me jumped down from the wall and landed heavily on its back with a sickening crack, before it stood back up, twisted to the side; it turned sharply in the opposite direction of the twist and another sickening crack sounded out above the raging fire as it righted itself and stalked up to join the other three. Then more began to jump down from the wall and the doors of the buildings beyond the gate opened up to reveal even more and soon I had a small battalion of my own, made entirely of other “me”s, and we all grinned devilishly. And then we charged. And the soldiers dropped their weapons and fled, running in random directions into the grass. And we chased. We caught a few of them but most of them managed to get away and we left them alone. After I was sure all the soldiers were out of range of sight from the hold, I dropped the illusions. The fire extinguished entirely, the multiple Tanis clones strewn about the battlefield vanished, the bodies of all the soldiers killed during the display appeared completely unharmed, though still lay dead across the field, and Silvara returned to sight beside me, up atop the wall, looking down on all the terror I had reaped. I smiled.

           

* * *

 

 

As they approached, the soldiers began to slow in their march until they were just at the edge of the mist. They were all wearing gold-painted plate armour of some kind, most of them wielding spears, some with bows, all with sword-belts strapped to their sides. I glanced down to my feet and noticed that the bodies of the four guards from before were gone.

            One soldier, a red feather sticking from his helmet marking him as unique among the ranks, stepped forward and called out with a thunderous voice, making me look back up. “ **WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT BUSINESS DO YOU HAVE HERE, INTRUDER?** ”

            I casually twirled my staff around in a flourish, and then slammed the butt into the cracked earth. Then, I called out in an equally thunderous voice. “ ** _I AM THE ROSE-THORN TANIS HAVEN. AND YOU. SHALL. NOT_** —”

            I was cut off when an arrow zipped past my head and I felt a sting on my cheek. I heard some of the soldiers snickering and saw the feather-capped one grin, even from that distance.

            I immediately ran the fuck away; I was _not_ dealing with that shit—going down to the gate in person was a stupid mistake to begin with. Of course, I didn’t flee without leaving the soldiers outside a present; I made sure to conjure up a quick illusion of myself, and then cloak the real me, as soon the arrow had passed by my head. Now, I directed it from the shadows. I heard it give the line I had decided best-suited the situation, and then I lit all the alleys around me ablaze. The fire was tall, but it was my fire, so I had nothing to fear. I threw my illusion at the group of guards, expecting them to flinch away, but there was one brave soul whom apparently was smart enough not to give into his fear. I felt the residual would-be pain from my illusion—something I only then realized was even a thing that happened—and my stomach lurched. I put a hand against the wall and relinquished control of my illusion for a moment. I didn’t realize I’d get pain feedback, but I suppose it made sense. It made my plan slightly more difficult, but still not impossible. I calmed my frayed nerves and took back control of the illusion, realizing that when I closed my eyes, I could also see the images through its eyes. This gave me a pretty decent advantage, not having to actual be able to see what was going on to still control my mystic copy efficiently. I decided to basically just set it to rampage mode and started towards the ladder Silvara had climbed earlier. While the illusory fire had seemed to destroy it, I could still see the faintly glowing ethereal—and real—version of the ladder, still standing tall, against, the wall, leading up to where Silvara was. I climbed the construct quickly, giving my copy a few quick commands here and there on the way, and flinching and almost crying out a few other times when it got impaled, over and over again. I almost lost my grip on the ladder once or twice, but pushed through it to the top. I had cloaked Silvara before I had even opened my mouth to the soldiers as to make sure that when she rained down arrows, she wouldn’t receive any accurate return-fire. I assumed that, since she had no idea it wasn’t actually me out there, that she hadn’t been firing any arrows in fear of hitting me in the crossfire. When I reached the top of the ladder, and climbed weakly onto the stone behind her, silently, I might add, I realized how much of an idiot I was for not realizing why she _actually_ hadn’t fired any arrows. She was fucking petrified. She just watched me get stabbed, repeatedly, and then catch fire, get stabbed some more, and then fucking explode.

            _Smooth fucking move, I didn’t realize you could actually do anything_ that _stupid._

_Yeah, I actually deserve that one._

I whispered softly from my place behind her and uncloaked myself. “Vara…”

            She turned around with a jolt and her eyes went wide, the tears staining her cheeks easily noticeable. She lunged at me, arms wide open, and almost knocked me backwards off the wall when she collided with my chest, sobbing. “I-I thought I…” Her breath was coming out in ragged gasps as she shook in my arms. I held her close until she relaxed a little. She leaned back up and glared daggers at me, wiping her eyes free of the tears that had gathered there, and she punched me, hard, square in the chest. “If you _EVER_ do something like that again, without telling me, I’ll kill you myself!” Her eyes went soft and she fell onto my chest again, sobbing a little once more. “I… I thought I lost you like…” I felt her grip tighten on my shirt. “It was like Liam all over again… except I was being forced to watch… If you hadn’t come back, I—”

            I finally found my voice again—that punch had hurt worse than the residual feeling of seven spears driving through my body, and it left me a little hazy—and I spoke softly, a hand running through her hair. “What matters is that I did come back… I’m not going to leave you, especially like that, okay?” I kissed the top of her head gently and hugged her tight, before trying to gently lift her off of me. She complied and then looked down at me, fresh tears on her cheeks, though she was smiling now. “C’mon, the soldiers are cheering and I don’t want that to last too long.” She stepped back a pace and held out a hand that I gladly received, helping me up to my feet. I looked out over the wall where the soldiers all had their weapons raised in cheer, and I shook my head. “These poor bastards won’t even know what hit them.” Using the mist that I had left in reserve within the houses and up on the wall, where I now stood, I created about eighty different clones of myself. They all began walking out of doors and through the flames, toward the rank of soldiers. The ones on the wall, as much as I was going to regret it, I signaled to simply jump over the side. I gripped the turret closest to me and grunted when the clone hit the ground, its back twisting at least seventy degrees, and its legs breaking. My legs began to wobble and I slowly slumped to the ground, gasping for air.

            Silvara began to freak out again. “Tanis! What’s wrong…?!”

            I looked up at her from my spot on the cold stone, on my knees, and grinning weakly. “D-Don’t worry, Vara… I’m fine…! I feel a bit of the pain that my clones feel, but I feel fine once they’re gone… This hurts, but I’ll be okay, and I need to do this…”

Silvara looked at me, her hands shaking a little, and she bit her lower lip. “If you say so, Tanis…” I grunted again, as another of my clones hit the hard, cracked ground below, and clutched my head, stifling a scream, a shrill groan coming out instead. Silvara immediately dropped to her knees and pulled me close, one hand wrapped around me and another hand gently stroking the spot I was clutching.

Apparently Lantigua heard the noise— _ping_ —because she immediately teleported up from the rooftop she was on and leaned down as well. “What’s wrong, Tanis?! What happened?”

Silvara shushed her from her invisible state but I spoke up anyway, gritting my teeth. “When I make clones of myself, I experience whatever they do… All the sights, all the sounds… all the…” I arched my back and screamed silently before slumping back down into Silvara’s arms, seeming to levitate above the ground as far as Lantigua was aware.

Lantigua put a hand on my cheek. “All of the pain…” She looked over the wall at the mass of clones I had in front of the hold and shook her head. “This is crazy, Tanny…”

I just chuckled breathily. “Crazy is what I—” I flinched and gasped before speaking again. “—it’s what I do…” I just smiled when Lantigua looked down on me, her face contorted in worry. “Don’t worry about me; this is almost done…”

She looked back over the wall just in time to notice the soldiers running for their lives into the grasslands. She looked back down to me, grinning, as I was standing myself back up—Silvara had to help me initially get to my feet, but whatever. I walked up to Lantigua’s side and stood, watching over the battlefield as my plan finally came to a close. As soon as the last soldier was out of sight, I waved my hand over the battlefield, from my perception at least, and the fire extinguished entirely, the multiple Tanis clones strewn about the battlefield vanished, the bodies of all the soldiers killed during the display appeared completely unharmed, though still lay dead across the field, and Silvara returned to sight beside me, up atop the wall, looking down on all the terror I had reaped. I smiled.


	3. A Clairvoyant's Vision and Tanis's Training

As soon as I had called off the illusions, I noticed some of the bodies were kind of… translucent. At my look of confusion, Lantigua spoke up. “When people die here, they just fade away after a little while. Those bodies are minds, remember? When you die, your mind shuts down, and you get ejected from The Realm, back to your physical body. And then that body shuts down because your mind is destroyed.” After a moment of appreciating how depressingly morbid that was, she explained the general idea behind teleporting—which was basically just “think about where you want to go, picture that place, then picture yourself somewhere in that place, and then tune out all the stuff that’s actually around you.” Honestly, it was pretty simple. After practicing teleporting a simple few feet forwards, Silvara and I both managed to teleport back to Rose-Thorn Hall and Lantigua met us there. I went straight to bed. Sure, I didn’t actually take any hits that I needed to recover from, but the pain feedback took quite a bit out of me.

            When I woke up, I noticed the cut on my cheek was gone and I felt completely rejuvenated—one more aspect of The Realm to look forward to. I made my way out of the throne room and started heading towards the training room, forgetting I could just teleport there now. Upon nearing the training room, I started to hear _pings_ , and a lot of them. It was only then that I noticed something. Each _ping_ had a different tone to it. I listened in for a moment, without moving—hell, without even breathing—and realized that it wasn’t that each _ping_ had a different tone, but that each individual person’s _ping_ must have been different, for there were repeat tones that followed their own rhythms. Of course, it was also possible that the repeat tones just so happened to be following random patterns, so I decided that I would test my theory on Lantigua and Silvara later. After all, it would be incredibly useful if I could figure out who was teleporting or using their summoning just by the tone.

            As I reached the door, I could hear people yelling and the sounds of clashing metal, what sounded to be a bit of attempted witty banter, and a _lot_ of _pinging_.

            _So, this is what training sounds like… It’s… pleasant._

_And it’ll sound significantly less pleasant if you pull any of those tricks from back at Sword-Arm Hall._

_Maybe so, but it’d be pretty fun…_

_You’re starting to sound like me._

_I thought I was you?_

_Yeah, but you’re supposed to be the more responsible part of us._

_Why do I have to make all the “good decisions” while you have all the fun? That hardly sounds fair!_

_Yeah, well, life’s not fair, so go back to being a good little Tanis before you end up attacking another stranger with a Silvara clone or something._

_…I thought we promised not to talk about that anymore._

_I’m sorry; you’re right; that was too soon…_

I chuckled and shook my head, sauntering into the room. As soon as I did so, everything went completely silent. No more yelling, no more clashing weapons, no more banter, no more _pinging_ , all eyes were on me and no one was making a sound.

            _Wow, you didn’t do_ anything _and it sounds less pleasant._

_Shut up…!_

            “Uh… Hey, guys. What’s up?” They all just gawked at me—well, seven out of the nine did; that Karian guy from before and some other guy with a staff were more-or-less unfazed, but they had to stop what they were doing when their respective partners stopped, and they were staring as well.

            I looked down at myself and noted I was, in fact, still dressed. I also noted that I did not have some kind of giant alien worm attached to me, sucking away my life forces, nor did I have any kind of anything that would warrant such shock in, on, or around my body. I looked back up to the nine recruits but they just kept staring. It would have been awkward if it hadn’t have been just straight-up confusing.

            Thank whatever God there may be, I heard a _ping_. I took note of the tone of the _ping_ and saw Cealum appear a few feet ahead of me. He looked around the room of recruits, all standing still and seeming to stare directly at him, and he cleared his throat. “Are… you all okay?”

            I couldn’t help but chuckle at that. It seemed to get Cealum’s attention as he turned around, his gaze locking onto the true source of the scene. “Oh, that makes a little more sense,” he said, nodding solemnly to himself.

            “And why, exactly, does it make sense?”

            Cealum grinned. “Well, you see… one of our new recruits—Sri—summoned a crystal ball!” He smiled as he turned and beckoned over a small girl. While she approached, the rest of the recruits just went back to training, though they were obviously listening in on what was going on.

Sri was… well, small. She was at least a head shorter than me, and thin, too. She had bright hazel eyes that contrasted against her tanned skin and her hair was long, and black, stretching down to her hips. She wore a black dress, white frills underlining it at the bottom, with black and blue striped stockings, and a pair of black flats. She looked like an Indian Lolita doll.

When she reached us, she gave an enthusiastic curtsy and held out her hand. “Hello, Tanis! My name is Valeria Srivada! You can just call me Sri, though. I really liked how you handled yourself at Sword-Arm Hall! It was super cool!” She was bouncing a little as she spoke, a wide smile plastered to her face.

I looked at the little girl, hopping in place, her hand held out, and then I looked to Cealum. I looked back to the girl and shook her hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Sri. I would love to chat, but I need to speak to Cealum for a few moments, alright?” I gave my best fake-smile and the little doll-girl skipped away happily, humming some familiar tune. I turned back to Cealum.

He must have noticed my poorly-hid _complete rage_ because he immediately held his hands up placatingly. “Trust me, Tanis; I know what you’re thinking. But—”

“ _Cealum…_ ” My voice, kept low so no one would overhear, was flooded with venom. “She’s just a little girl!” I whispered harshly, grabbing his shoulder with, possibly, more force than was necessary.

“No, Tanis, you don’t understand; she—”

I wasn’t hearing any of it. “I know our forces are low, but this?! You can’t bring a child to war, Cealum! This is—”

“—Tanis, she’s twenty-three!”

My hand fell off of his shoulder—I didn’t release it and lower my arm, it actually just _fell_ —and I stared at him dumbstruck.

He scratched the back of his head and chuckled. “I know! That was my first reaction, too. But it’s true; she’s older than the both of us.”

I just shook my head. I looked back to the small girl, whom was idly rocking back and forth on her tippy-toes, currently without a training partner due to the numbers, and then I looked back to Cealum. “But, even the way she was acting—the way she was dressed!”

He laughed again, a little louder now. “Yeah, she’s a little bit eccentric, and has quite a bit of energy, but believe me.” He tapped the goggles on his forehead. “I know what I’m talking about.”

 _Well, if we can’t trust mysterious, ancient artifacts, what_ can _we trust?_

I just shook my head again and chuckled, turning around to look back on the girl. I crossed my arms and smiled. “Well, I’ll be.” I looked around at the other recruits and remembered why the girl had been called over in the first place. I turned back to Cealum and put my hands in my pockets, shifting all of my weight onto my left foot. “That still doesn’t explain why everyone was looking at me funny. And how did Sri know about what happened at the other hold?”

He smiled. “She summoned a crystal ball!”

I tilted my head. He said it as though that was supposed to explain everything.

_Hey, dipshit, what do crystal balls get used for in literally every media ever?_

_Uh… I don’t know, Clairvoyance, I guess?_

_…_

_Oh… Right._

“She’s a clairvoyant.” I stated matter-of-factly.

Cealum’s grin widened, my test apparently passed with flying colours. “She’s a telekinetic, as well.”

“Hm… To be able to see and move basically anything from anywhere is definitely a helpful skill.” I closed my eyes and thought for a moment. “That explains how she knew what happened, but why was everyone else looking at me strangely?”

Cealum just gave me a look.

“What, they’re all scared of me now or something?”

Cealum shrugged. “You kind of went overboard.”

“Hey, I just did it because I wanted them to stay away from us!”

Cealum simply sighed. “Well, I’m having Sri keep an eye on their King so we know what his next move is, just in case. But please, the next time you decide to do something like that, explain it to _someone_. I thought Silvara was gonna throw herself into the flames when she saw you get stabbed.” His tone had been gradually growing sterner over the course of his speech. He must have noticed, because he toned it down and smiled gently. “You need to be more careful, is all I’m saying. Alright?” He put a hand on my shoulder and I simply nodded.

“Yeah, sorry about that… I just got caught up in the moment, y’know?” I grinned sheepishly. “It was… invigorating; to see so many people fall for something so simple was empowering—enlightening, even!” I chuckled. “But don’t worry; I’ll make sure to let others in on it next time.”

            That was apparently all Cealum wanted to hear, because as soon as the words left my mouth, he just nodded and turned to the rest of the recruits. “Alright, everyone, this is Tanis!” Everyone stopped feigning their disinterest and focused solely on Cealum now. “He is the man that you all witnessed take on an entire rank on his own earlier and come out with barely a single scratch.” His tone was calm, but his voice still managed to carry through the entire room with incredible ease. “As I told you all earlier, he is the primary candidate for the position of our new King, and now, you have seen first-hand why that is.”

            I blanched.

            _…He wants ME to be the King of Rose-Thorn Hall?_

_Well, he doesn’t want you to just be the dish boy._

_But… All I did was take down a few members of a small rank of guards!_

_You used one small rank of guards in such a way that you may have changed the outcome of the entire war._

_But..._

_All you ever think about is butts! Shut up and listen to Cealum._

_…_

I turned my attention back outward and stared at Cealum in disbelief but he merely grinned. He motioned me forward, while the recruits all looked at me the same way they did before, with the exception of Sri, who looked at me with only respect—she looked proud, even—Karian, who seemed more concerned than anything, and that guy with the staff again, who simply looked content.

            Cealum spoke up once more. “Now, some of you may be confused—even a little bit intimidated—by what you saw through the crystal ball earlier. However, Tanis had a very good reason for what he did; Tanis, if you would?”

            I frowned.

_Way to put me on the spot, Cealum…_

I looked at the recruits, all of them looking back to me, their eyes full of wonder and what could potentially become great fear; they were all expectant. It took me a moment, but I realized that this was a test. Cealum wanted to see how well I would be able to recover from something like this. I figured I may as well give him what he wanted. “As Cealum said… I had a good reason for the display at the hold.” As soon as my voice had sounded out, the recruits all perked up a little, even Karian and the staff-kid. It brought a smile to my face and I continued. “I don’t know exactly how much information you all were given before you saw what happened, but I’ll fill you in; my squad was sent to gather information on the plans of the Sword-Arms, being the largest hold right now, to make sure that they weren’t about to launch an attack on us.” I decided to leave out the “because we are currently at our weakest” part. “Our original plan had been to simply go under stealth and eavesdrop on any guards posted around—some of them might be talking about their opinions of whatever their next move would be—and then when we had the information, we would leave.” All of them seemed to be hanging on my every word, not in fear anymore, either; they all seemed… excited. I gave Cealum a cursory glance, wondering what he had said to them about me or if something else had happened to change their moods, but he simply gestured outwards, silently telling me to keep going. “Anyways, suffice it to say, the plan failed. None of the guards were actually near the outer wall, where we entered; they had all been sent out somewhere. We found out later, thanks to Lantigua’s scouting, that they had been sent to intimidate the Shield-Bearers, just to add some pressure, I’d imagine. Regardless, around the time she came back, the soldiers had returned from their mission. We could have left before they got back, but I knew that if they were pressuring the Shield-Bearers, we would be next on their to-do list.” It was strange to have this group of people, whom I had thought of as equals, devote their unrivaled attention to me, but it was also comforting in a way. I smiled and continued. “Their tactic was simple; they wanted to put the other holds in fear. They wanted to make sure the other holds would not attack them, so that they could gather even _more_ troops and wielders until they were so far ahead in the game that no one could catch them. _Then_ , and only then, would they strike, taking down both holds in one go.” I was saying things that should have been frightening to hear, but everyone in the room simply had a look of determination on their faces. They all held themselves proudly and confidently. “So, I figured, it would be best to use their tactic against them. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t enjoy killing by any means, but the only reason I left so many of those soldiers alive was so that they could spread the word; they would tell the other soldiers, and their King, and all the wielders, of the horror that they faced. _That_ was the purpose of my actions. All of them had been confident, coming back from a mission with seemingly few casualties, where all they had to do was make a lot of noise to scare off another hold. So, I hit them while they were confident. I took away that confidence. I made them all realize just what they were in for if they ever decided to come to our hold. And it worked. As you all saw, they were terrified.” Everyone in the room smiled and nodded, with the exception of that kid with the staff, who just nodded. “Basically, all I was doing was making them fear us before they did the same; it should keep them away for a bit, while we gather some more forces and get ready for when someone finally _does_ decide to attack.” With that, I was finished, so I simply nodded and looked back to Cealum.

            He was looking at someone in particular, but before I could follow his gaze, he turned it to me. “Well said, Tanis.” He looked to the recruits again, as a whole this time. “Now that you’ve all been informed, I suggest you get back to training! As Tanis said, eventually, they will attack, and we need to be ready for when they do. So—”

            Sri spoke up from her corner in the room. “Everyone, wait! The King of the Sword-Arms has a visitor!” She grinned, bouncing a little on the spot as she ushered everyone over. “Come on, come watch!” She sat down on the floor, legs crossed, with a large, round, crystal orb resting in her lap. Everyone went silent and gathered around her as she— _ping_ —waved a hand over the orb, sound starting to filter out of it. It was the sound of a door creaking, and then of a deep, male voice. I peered into the ball and somehow, it seemed to completely fill my vision, giving me a very clear view of what I was seeing.

It was a throne room, much like the one at our own hold, but with far more lavish décor, the carpet red instead of purple, banners hanging from the pillars with the Sword-Arm crest—a picture of two broadswords in an x-shape—on them. The throne was a polished golden, with red cushions and more banners hanging off of its sides. There was a small table beside the throne, where there lay a box of some kind; the box was black with what looked like a pressure gauge on the front of it. Sitting upon the throne was a man, holding a wine glass. The man could have been no older than his early twenties but he had a certain… feel about him. He was too mature; his expression was too hard; his clothes were too… sleek.

_Ping_

I turned around and broke eye contact with the orb, causing my head to spin for a moment. I saw Silvara standing in the doorway to the training room. Her hair was kind of messy and her eyes were half-lidded; her clothes were ruffled and one side of her shirt was actually slipping down over her shoulder a little. It was adorable.

_Man, she’s cute._

_Hey! Back off, dude, she’s mine!_

_…I_ AM _you._

_…_

_…_

_…_

_Did you seriously just—_

_—shut the fuck up._

She rubbed her eyes sleepily before stifling a yawn and walking over to the group. “Hey, everyone, what’s—”

A few of the people crowded around the orb shushed her and I motioned her to come sit. I smiled and whispered. “Just watch.” She knelt down beside me and I looked into the crystal once more, making it fill my vision again as it did before.

The man was staring at the door now, sipping at his wine, as it slowly creaked open. He threw one end of his purple scarf over the shoulder of his black jacket with his free gloved hand. As another man—a soldier—walked through the door, the man in the throne crossed one leg over the other, his dark blue jeans contrasting the red liquid in his glass. He bounced his air-borne foot—clad in sleek, black dress shoes—impatiently. He glared daggers at the soldier as he walked in, and the soldier shrank under the man’s presence.

After the soldier stopped walking, and stood in silence for a few moments, the King spoke. “Why… when I have told you, time… and _time again_ , are you in my throne room, when I am _having my BREAK_?!” The soldier’s head shot down and he flinched back as though the words had physically struck him. “What could _POSSIBLY_ be _so_ important, that you had to disturb me?!” The man’s voice was low, but hard. It was strong, but calm, with just a hint of rage leaking out of the seams. It was the tone a strict father would take when speaking down to his children after they had done something to seriously upset him. It was mildly terrifying.

“Y-Your lordship, I am greatly sorry—”

“As you should be.”

“R-Right, I’m sorry. I… regret to inform you… that…”

“Out with it, already! You’ve eaten up more time than I wanted to give this in the first place.” The King put his wine glass down and reached into the black box and pulled out a fat, Cuban cigar. He cut one end off with a cigar clip that he pulled from one of his coat pockets, returning the clip and popping the cigar into his mouth, replacing the clip in his hand with a Zippo lighter, lighting the cigar up. He put the lighter back into his pocket as well and puffed at the tobacco. It had been such a smooth, practiced movement, that it had taken only the amount of time allotted to him speaking before the tip of the cigar was glowing red, a thin trail of smoke lifting to the ceiling.

The soldier’s eyes seemed to widen as soon as the King had pulled the cigar out; it must have been a sign that the King was really upset, if he had to have a smoke. “The Rose-Thorn member Tanis Haven—”

“New Rose-Thorn member, huh? Why does it concern me?” He had pulled the cigar out of his mouth now and smoke casually clouded in front of him as he spoke.

“It…”

“Well?!”

The soldier stood straight and declared loudly, “It destroyed my garrison, m’lord! The one you had sent to Shield-Bearer Hall.”

“…And?”

The soldier slumped again. “M-M’lord, it took out an entire garrison… on its own!”

“Of course he did, you fucking imbecile! He wields a badge, you do not!”

“No, m’lord, you don’t understand—”

“Then enlighten me!”

“I-It wouldn’t die! Everything was on fire and there were a hundred of them! It took eleven of our men to subdue just one of them, and when we did, it exploded and more started coming!”

The King groaned. “You keep saying ‘it’ as though this man were something other than human.”

“M-M’lord… It was no man… It was a demon, in the shape of a boy!”

“There are no such things as demons in this world, you buffoon. Quit toying with fantasy and look at the facts. A Rose-Thorn member came, killed your ranks, and left. He was picking you off because you are weak. He was no demon, he was simply better than you fools, as your generals have told you time and time again that he would be. Wielders are infinitely more powerful than you. You can’t break their summonings with your weapons, so you couldn’t hope to—”

“M’lord, we impaled it. It had no summoning. It just ran at us and we stuck ten spears into it. Seven of them were in all at once and then it exploded. And then more came. They all looked the same, and they all charged us.”

The King’s eyebrows furrowed and he picked up his wine glass, sipping at it. “If this boy took out your entire garrison, how are you here?”

“I-I fled with the others.”

“…You did what?”

“W-When they charged us! We all ran back into the grasslands to escape! They chased for a while, but eventually stopped and many of us got away. I immediately came to report—”

“You are not supposed to flee.”

“M’lord, there was nothing else _to_ do. The rest of the garrison broke, so I—”

The King threw his wine glass at the soldier and it shattered against his face, the pieces of glass scratching him up and the wine from within burning the wounds. “You… do… _not… FLEE._ ” The King was standing up now, stalking towards the soldier and the soldier was cowering on the ground, holding his face in his hands, breath ragged. “In my name, you do not flee. **_DO YOU UNDERSTAND?!_** ” The King grabbed the soldier by the visor on his helmet and pulled him up to look at him, eye-to-eye.

The soldier nodded vigorously, whimpering a squeaky “yes” and then the King threw him back to the ground with a loud clattering of metal armour. He turned around now, back to the soldier and slipped off one of his leather gloves, reaching into a pocket of his jacket. There was a _ping_. It seemed… extra sharp for some reason. Like… instead of the normal pin-to-ceramic sound, it was like a toothpick snapping. It still had that ringing-out-forever quality and was unmistakably a _ping_. It was just… a weird _ping_. “You are dismissed.”

“Y-Yes, m’lord…!” The soldier clambered to his feet and started scurrying away.

The King quickly turned, his scarf and coat billowing around him, and held up a standard-looking black handgun. “Permanently.”

The soldier stopped when he heard the last word and his head exploded, what sounded like a crack of thunder following, before he could even turn around to meet the eyes of his killer.

The King put the gun back into his pocket and sauntered over to his throne, carefully sitting back down in it. He had left the cigar on the table and he picked it up again, his hand back in its glove, and called out to some unseen servant. “Dispose of this atrocity and fetch me another glass!”

Someone was seen scurrying in from the doors as my vision seemed to flicker out of focus until everything was white and I blinked.

I looked around, slightly dizzy, and saw that everyone else was in the same state I was, except for Sri, who just looked tired. She was still smiling faintly, but she looked like she would collapse any second. “Sri, are you okay…?”

She looked up at me and closed her eyes, her smile growing. “Mhm! It’s just tiring to use my orb this way… Looking through it on my own is fine, but the more people that are looking through it, the more it starts to… strain.” I looked down at the orb and saw that it now had a milky white fog inside of it, swirling around lazily. “I just need to take a nap and I’ll be right as rain!” She stood, the orb floating up beside her, and she stretched, arching her back, arms high. A few small pops were heard and then her arms went limp and she slouched. “Nnn… I’ll see you guys later. I’m exhausted…” She skipped over to me and hugged my waist—which really caught me off guard; I just kind of put my hands up in the air and looked down at her, surprised—the top of her head only reaching as high as my chest, and then she turned quickly and skipped, presumably, off to whatever room she was staying in at the hold.

Silvara looked up at me from the floor, her face covered in confusion and hints of anger. I just chuckled. “She’s in her twenties.”

Silvara’s eyes widened and she looked to the door Sri had left from, and then looked back to me. I just shrugged and she gave a quick “huh” and stood up as well, cracking her back the same way the Lolita had. “So, that was the King of the Sword-Arms, huh?”

“Seems that way.”

“He was so…”

“Irritable?”

Silvara just looked at me, her eyebrows knitted. “…gay.”

Cealum must have heard because he exploded into a giggle fit, clutching his stomach as he tried to stand. Silvara and I shared a look and then also started to laugh pretty hard. A few of the other recruits had also laughed for a while and some had just stood and went back to training. After we collected ourselves, Cealum took a deep breath and then addressed Silvara and me. “Well, ‘Lord Rusin’ doesn’t seem to have any kinds of plans for us for now, so now that that’s done, it’s time for you two to train!”

Silvara smiled, crossing her arms confidently. “That’s what I came here for!”

I admired Silvara’s messy hair for just a second longer and then turned to Cealum. “Any special rules for training?”

“Other than ‘don’t kill your partner’, no. This training is more for martial improvement than anything else, so don’t be practicing your disturbing illusions in here; that’s something we can find a way to test out later.” He winked at me and I just scratched my head sheepishly. “Tanis, you’re with Alec.” He pointed to the boy I kept noticing earlier—the one with the staff. “And Vara, you’re with Ravenna.” He pointed to some brunette girl on the other side of the room who was doing stretches.

Silvara gave a mock salute, giggled, and then bounced off happily towards Ravenna. I looked at Cealum curiously. “Any specific reason I’m with him?” I gestured with my head toward the odd man, apparently named Alec.

Cealum shot me a grin. “Well, you’re probably the least martially apt here, and he’s the most. Think of it as~” he waved his hand in a circular “how to say this?” kind of motion and then stopped, “power levelling.”

I gave him a disapproving glance but nodded anyways, and skulked off towards Alec. When I reached him, I was finally able to actually make out the details of his appearance. He wore a simple, black tee, light blue jeans, black combat boots, and a gray cloak. His black hair went as far down as his jaw and his bangs covered his right eye. The uncovered eye was a pale, icy blue. The other thing I noticed was that he had a collar around his neck that was almost identical to Silvara’s. He couldn’t have been more than nineteen years old.

As I approached, he grew a thin smile and nodded my way but didn’t say anything; he simply flourished his staff—a five-foot long, metal rod with a metal-encased gem at one end—and then shoved the butt onto the floor and leaned into it.

_He’s the best fighter we got?_

_Well, let’s try to give him a run for his money, then, at least. Cealum only said no “disturbing illusions”, but our strength lies in deceit; so let’s see if we can’t just make him_ think _we’re a better fighter._

_And if we manage to get that lie across, it may as well be the truth…_

_That’s the plan!_

_Alright, let’s do it!_

_After you~_

I conjured a staff of my own, my now-usual wooden staff, with the stereotypical wooden swirl at one end, and the flat butt at the other. It was nothing fancy, but it could get the job done.

Alec spoke up now, his voice calm and collected, though it contained undertones of whimsy and excitement. “Are you ready to begin, Tanis?”

By this point, I had conjured up enough mist around the two of us for at least three clones and maybe a couple more weapons.

_Hey, I wonder if we can release mist while we fight._

_No time better than the present to test it out._

I grinned and twirled my staff around, the mist covering us going unfazed. “As ready as I’ll ever be, I suppose.” I held my staff firm and pointed it toward the ground with the butt behind my back, as I got into what I hoped was a fairly standard combat stance. Alec smirked but it didn’t really do anything to confirm my hopes one way or the other. Thankfully, none of that mattered as I was _actually_ cloaked, and directly behind the boy, waiting for the moment he gave the go-head to begin.

Had I not have caught the initial movement of his head, turning ever so slightly behind him, to where I was actually standing, I would not have had time to duck when he spun around, staff outstretched, aimed directly for my head. Thankfully, I _did_ duck, and I rolled backwards to get away from him, coming out of my maneuver in a crouch. I stood and uncloaked myself.

“Sorry, Tanis, you’ve got heavy steps.” He smirked and I replied in kind.

“Well, maybe we’ll all just have to mask it with a little more noise.” Two more clones appeared now as I cloaked and swapped places with one of them, and then uncloaked. The four of us circled around Alec now, staffs at the ready.

“Four on one, Tanis? This is hardly a fair fight!” He grinned, thrusting his staff out faster than I could register and the butt of it rammed right into the gut of one of my clones. Then, before I could even react to the pain feedback, he twirled around quickly, using the momentum to smash the side of his staff into another clone, sending it flying. Not wanting to deal with the pain from the hit _and_ from it skidding across the floor, I dispersed it before it had the chance to do so. He brought the staff over his head now, back to the clone he had originally hit—which was now doubled over, holding its stomach—and brought the entire length of the staff down onto the clone’s back, forcing me to disperse it as well. “You’d need over ten of these things to have any real kind of advantage!”

I gripped my own staff hard, repressing the pain I felt in my back, side, and stomach. Now that the afflicted clones were gone, I was no longer experiencing the pain, but the memory of it lingered. My one remaining clone and I spoke simultaneously. “So, I overestimated myself, but I haven’t underestimated you yet and I don’t plan to. Let’s see how you deal with something a little less… traditional.” I was tired of pain feedback so I decided illusions of something other than myself would have to do. Thankfully, the entire time we had been fighting—or rather, the entire time that my clones had been getting their asses handed to them—I had been able to keep a constant stream of thick mist coming from my hands. Using the new mist, I cloaked, and this time made sure to also silence my footsteps, replacing my real self with another clone. Then, before Alec could manage to do anything else, I transformed both the clones into something a little less than human; they went down on all fours and morphed—in a rather grotesque way, too—into flaming hellhounds. They were about waist-height and pure black, with the exception of the gaps in between where the ribs of a normal wolf would be, which glowed red as though filled with molten rock; they were also on fire because why the fuck not? The hounds circled around Alec, growling and snarling, as he brought his staff back up and readied himself. The fire from the hounds began to spread to the floor, creating a makeshift circle of flames around the boy and his new training partners. Both of the hounds jumped at him at once and— _ping_ —he pulled his staff apart from the middle as the two halves quickly transformed into brilliantly designed and etched silver swords, sticking them both out in opposite directions to impale both of my hounds at the same time. Thankfully, they had at least served as enough of a distraction that I had the chance to uncloak, sweep his feet out from under him with my staff, and then re-cloak, while he quickly rolled sideways out of the fall to recover and get back on his feet.

He grinned and chuckled a little. “Not bad, Tanis—not bad at all! Too bad it won’t work a second time…” He winked in the general direction of where I had cloaked myself again and brought his two swords up in a defensive-looking stance.

As much as I hated to admit it, he was right; the same thing wouldn’t work a second time. He would be expecting it. And that was exactly why I did what I did next. I summoned up two more creatures from the mist that was now pretty thick around the two of us; I didn’t let any of it leave our paint-designated court, so it was getting denser. The creatures I summoned this time were harpies, and they circled around above Alec but he paid them no apparent mind. He was focusing on the ground, trying to discern where I would hit him from this time. I sent the harpies down on him from two different angles and he was forced to act, cutting the harpies down out of the air and, as I uncloaked behind him, he swung around, swords colliding with my staff and knocking me back several feet; because of that, it really surprised him when I _actually_ came from in front of him, brought my staff up into his stomach, knocking the wind out of him, and then disappeared before he could counter somehow. The clone of myself that I had made simply stuck out its tongue and dispersed.

_Cocky, much?_

_Hey, I’m just havin’ a little fun!_

_Did you forget? You’re not supposed to have fun! That’s my job! You’re supposed to be the calm, collected, good little boy._

_I’d stick my tongue out at you, too, but I feel as though it’d have a nulled effect._

_Just pay attention to the fight…_

_Fine…_

I circled silently around Alec as his swords transformed back into a staff with a _ping_.

_Hey, it’s the same tone as the first time!_

_Another theory solidified?_

_Well, let’s give it time; it could be a coincidence._

Alec simply closed his eyes and stood up straight, his staff at his side, butt against the floor. He wasn’t in any kind of fighting position anymore; he was just standing there.

_Is he baiting us…?_

_They say he’s a master._

_…You are literally the worst kind of person._

_You’re at it again with all this self-loathing and personal deprivation? I think we need to find you some professional help…_

I shook my head slowly and frowned. Knowing he was trying to bait me, I decided, instead, to conjure up another hellhound in front of me and sick it on him, just to see how he’d react. _That_ was a mistake.

As soon as the hellhound appeared, Alec spun in a circle and used the momentum from the spin to hurl his staff over my hound. I directed the hellhound to jump up and take the hit for me, but it wasn’t fast enough and it did nothing to stop the staff from coming directly towards me, as I stood just a few feet behind it. The staff whirled in the air and connected with the side of my head, knocking me to the ground hard. My head began to spin and I clutched at it with my free hand. Knowing that Alec was disarmed now, I did my best to recover and rush him, my footsteps still silenced. He had been walking towards his staff when I reached him—and then I realized why he was only walking; he was baiting me again—but before I could fix my mistake, I uncloaked to swing my staff at him, hoping to catch him in the side. Unfortunately, he had been expecting it and easily back-stepped out of my range, and grabbed my staff. Even more unfortunately, I hadn’t been expecting him to grab it, so I tried to carry through with my swing, and my hands fazed right through the damned thing, turning it back to mist. Before I had a chance to recover, he stepped forward again, placing one hand against my left shoulder, bent down and grabbed my left inner-thigh with his other hand, then pulled up on my thigh as he pushed down on my shoulder, quickly flipping me upside down, my head colliding with the floor and my neck spraining.

Apparently, Cealum had been watching because I heard his voice call out something and I assumed it was probably along the lines of “that’s enough, Alec; you’ve kicked his ass enough for now” and I just kind of sulked, not wanting to make too many movements, lest I upset my neck. My head was spinning from the vertigo—smashing it off the floor probably hadn’t helped—and I probably would have thrown up, were it possible.

It wasn’t fun.

When everything stopped looking like it was spinning around me, I saw Alec standing over me, an apologetic smile on his face. He bent down and got on his knees beside me, held a hand out over my head, and a light, green mist, much like my own mist—other than the colour and the fact that it was visible—began to fall off of it slowly. The green mist eventually reached my head and I felt it seep into my body, as though my pores were absorbing a cool wind. The mist stopped coming and my head immediately felt infinitely better, and my neck was no longer sore—it didn’t even have the usual stiffness that I had come to just be used to. I gave off a hearty groan of pleasure as all the pain seemed to just melt away from my entire body and I sagged into the floor. I was more relaxed at that moment than I had probably been at any other point in my life.

It was glorious.

I looked up at Alec and gave him a silent “thanks” in the form of a nod and I smiled. There was something odd about the boy—that was for sure—but he was definitely a nice guy, even if he did almost just snap my neck and embarrassed the shit out of me in front of all the new recruits.

He gave me a closed-eyed smile and stood, holding a hand out for me to help me up. I gladly accepted and gripped it, pulling myself up to my feet.

“So, you’ve got healing, huh? That’s gotta be useful.”

He grinned and nodded. “I have healing, yes, and mastery over all styles of combat.”

I raised my eyebrows. “That’s pretty impressive… and it has good synergy as well.”

He seemed shocked for some reason. “W-Why, thank you…” He scratched his head sheepishly and continued. “And, uh, sorry for almost snapping your neck back there; I guess I got a little too serious…” He just blushed faintly, with a goofy grin plastered on his face.

I shrugged it off. “It’s all good, man; don’t worry about it! Besides, you fixed me right up and I actually feel better now than I did before we started training, so I’m definitely not going to complain!” I chuckled lightly.

Alec’s icy blue eye—just the one; I couldn’t see his other eye past his bangs—averted from my gaze for just a moment, before he simply nodded and smiled.

_…There’s something shifty about this guy. He seems too… nervous._

_Maybe it has something to do with that display back at Sword-Arm Hall?_

_Nah, while Cealum was talking about that earlier, he was one of the few who didn’t seem fazed. I think he’s got something to hide…_

_Well, I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to keep an eye on him, but I wouldn’t worry too much about it; as you said, even if he is a little odd, he’s a pretty nice guy._

_Yeah… we’ll see._

Cealum called out from his spot, leaning against one of the walls, and addressed everyone in the room. “Alright, everyone, that’s enough for today! You’ve all worked hard enough for your first day, and I believe you deserve some rest! You can explore the hold—there are plenty of rooms with all kinds of interesting stuff in them, if you’re into that kind of thing—or you can just return to your rooms or go back to Earth. You get the rest of the day off!” Everyone gave a cheer, except for Alec who just smiled.

Cealum _pinged_ —and it _was_ the same tone as before, if my memory was as good as I hoped—out of the room, as well as a few other recruits that I didn’t have names for yet.

 _I’d say it’s safe to assume that our_ ping _theory was right._

 _I’d say it’s safe to assume that you are correct. I’d also say it’s safe to assume that no one else hears the_ pings _._

_Should I tell someone about it?_

_Nah, keep it a secret for now; it’ll be more useful if people don’t know that you can hear them use their summonings._

_True…_

I turned back to Alec and nodded, giving him a formal smile. “I suppose I’ll see you later, Alec.”

He smirked and nodded as well. “I suppose you shall, and I will have even more to teach you.” He winked and _pinged_ out as well.

I turned back around to see Silvara walking towards me, that Ravenna girl in tow. Before I could say anything, Ravenna picked up her pace and hopped in front of Silvara, hands on her hips, smile wide on her face. She couldn’t have been more than an inch taller than me, but I felt like I had to crane my neck to be on her level; it wasn’t that she was looking down on me; her presence just seemed to tower over mine, her unbridled energy engulfing my contained energy. She wore a black, long-sleeved shirt under an open, red plaid sweater. The colour of her sweater brought out a little more of the red that showed in her shoulder-length auburn hair, covered by a riding hat—one of those things that people who rode racehorses always wore. Other than that, she wore simple, blue jeans, and what looked to be riding boots—more racehorse-riding apparel. She was the first girl I’d seen since being here that didn’t look small in some way or another. She had a similar build to Cealum, lean but not thin. She looked strong.

She held out a hand confidently. “Hello, Tanis! My name’s Ravenna!”

I just kind of looked at her for a moment.

_You okay there, Tanis?_

_…That’s a good question._

I noticed Silvara throw her hands into the air in frustration as I kept staring at the strong-looking girl.

_What, now you’re gonna crush on her, too?_

_No, you ass; I just feel like… I’ve seen her before._

After I didn’t say anything or shake her hand for more than a few moments, Ravenna drew her hand back and scowled. “Rude!” She looked to Silvara, who just seemed mad at me, arms crossed off to the side. “Why’s he just staring at me? Does he not talk?”

I shook my head and chuckled. “Sorry, you just look really familiar.”

That got the girl’s attention. Her head whipped back to me and her eyes locked onto mine, her grin almost manic. “I do?!”

I subconsciously took a small step back. “Uh, yeah, I feel like I’ve seen you somewhere before…” I scratched my head sheepishly and took another look at her clothing.

_She’s obviously a racer…_

_Maybe you saw her on TV once or twice? You’re always watching those boring-ass horse-racing competitions._

_They’re not boring!_

_You don’t even bet on them; of course they’re boring!_

_Well, fuck you, too._

I realized the girl was still staring at me, her grin still a little too energetic, and I decided to speak up. “Are you a professional…?” I gestured to her boots.

Her eyes flickered and her grin grew wider, though less manic. “So you do recognize me!”

“Well, not by name, but—”

She held out a hand. “—close enough! I was in the regional qualifications last season!”

I smiled. “Oh, yeah; I think I remember now… You came in third, right?”

“Second, actually!” she announced, crossing her arms proudly over her chest again.

Silvara spoke up now and I realized she had no idea what was going on. “You two… know each other?”

I laughed. “No, I just saw her on TV a little while back.”

Silvara’s eyes widened and she turned to Ravenna. “You were on TV?! What show are you in?!”

This time Ravenna laughed. “No, no, it wasn’t anything like that! My cousin has been teaching me to breed horses and I brought one of his best to the races during the last season. I ended up smoking the competition and making it to the regional qualification round. I didn’t make my bracket unfortunately, but it was still fun!”

Silvara nodded solemnly. “Oh~ I get it now.” She turned to me. “I forgot you watched all those races, Tanis.”

I shrugged. “I think they’re interesting. It takes a lot of time to bond with an animal and even longer to train it for something like that; I’ve always just kind of admired those kinds of sports because they’re a little bit more than _just_ sports, y’know?”

Ravenna was beside me now, and she slammed a solid hand down on my shoulder, scaring the crap out of me. “I know, right! FINALLY someone understands!”

I just grinned and rolled my eyes, shrugging her hand off and turning to Silvara. “Anyways, you ready to go to school, Vara?” I couldn’t help but chuckle at how silly going to school sounded with everything else that was going on.

She chuckled in kind and nodded.

Ravenna looked back and forth between the two of us, her face contorted in confusion. “Hey, uh… Where do you two go to school?”

I looked up at her now, tilting my head. “You probably haven’t heard of it; it’s kind of in the middle of nowhere; it’s called Sandford—”

She grabbed me by the shoulders and actually _lifted me off the fucking ground_ before speaking, while shaking me. “ _YOU GUYS GO TO SANDFORD SECONDARY, TOO?!_ ”

_These women are going to be the death of us._

_Yeah… I blame you._

_I didn’t expect anything less._

Silvara just smiled sheepishly at my expression when I spoke up. “You go to SS?”

She unceremoniously dropped me back to the floor—I thankfully managed to catch myself—and nodded vigorously. “What day is it for you guys? Back on Earth, I mean.”

“January second.”

Her eyes lit up and her smile widened even further. “Same! You guys said you were just walking to school now, though?”

Silvara and I nodded in unison and said “Yep.”

“Well, it was second period for me.” Her eyes went wide. “Oh, it was _YOU_ in the hall!” I gave her a blank stare and she continued. “Whatever, anyways, come meet me in front of the caf at lunch, okay?” She smiled, seeming to be calmed down a fair bit now.

Silvara giggled and then spoke up. “We’ll see ya then, Ravenna!”

I managed to smile and nod to Ravenna before she _pinged_ out of the room, more than likely immediately back to Earth to hang out with her new friends, namely us.

I looked to Silvara and nodded, and she _pinged_ away as well.

Then, it was my turn. I closed my eyes, thought of the sidewalk we were walking on, back on Earth, of my real body, and when I opened my eyes, all I could see was Silvara’s face, with a great, blue background.

_God fucking damn it…_


	4. A Quick Reunion and Dull Days

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay! I fixed the tabulation stuff! Now to go back and edit the last three chapters so they're not so broken...

            Silvara looked down on me, grinning, while I stared straight up. I was on the ground.

            _Why does teleporting have to be so fucking weird?_

_Because magic, now pick your ass up off the sidewalk; you’re making me look bad._

_I’m_ so _sorry…_

I sat up, and got to my feet, rubbing the back of my head. When I had teleported back to my body, I had apparently been mid-step, and I didn’t know that, so I just kind of overcorrected for my odd position and fell straight backwards. And my head fucking _hurt_. Sylar’s blow when he picked me up the other day was coming in full force now. It wasn’t unbearable but it still sucked.

            Silvara giggled as I made an annoyed huff, glaring daggers at the sidewalk. “You okay, there, Tanis?”

            I looked up at her, unimpressed. “I’m fine…”

            She slugged me in the shoulder and laughed it off. “Oh, get over it, ya big suck. C’mon, let’s go; you were late enough as it was, remember.”

            “Yeah, yeah…” I wiped the back of my pants free of the snow and ice that had collected and matched Silvara’s pace.

            After a few minutes of walking in relative silence, Silvara spoke up. “Hey, Tanis…?”

            “What up?”

            “Can you still do all your illusions and stuff here…? I would test out my bow, but I feel like it would draw too much attention if it did work.”

            I held my hand out and a bit of mist trickled freely from my fingertips. Silvara looked at my hand expectantly and when she didn’t apparently see anything happen, her shoulders slumped. I chuckled. “Don’t worry; it does work. Look.” I let the mist gather in my palm and it slowly coalesced into the shape of a rose. I tucked it behind her ear, the deep red giving an interesting contrast against her bright, silver hair, and I gave her a dumb grin.

            She just rolled her eyes and thumbed at the pedals with a hand for a moment. “You’re _such_ a charmer, Tanis.” She chuckled lightly and smiled.

            I just smiled back and shoved my hands into my pockets. We walked in comfortable silence again until we got to the school.

            When we arrived, we were greeted by our usual group—Meagan, Katie, Sara, and—ugh—Klaude. We all hated Klaude. Literally every single one of us wanted him to get the fuck out of our group and just leave us alone but we were all too nice to say so.

            Anyways, descriptions take too long and as far as my story is concerned, none of these people are really relevant right now, so I’m just gonna skip over that bit until it becomes important.

            The point is, it was an average morning as far as everyone but Silvara and I was concerned. We all met up in front of the school, chatted about whatever, went into the school, sat just outside the cafeteria, around the corner from the lobby, chatted about more whatever, and then, when the first bell rang, we all stood, got our stuff, Silvara and I hugged, Meagan fist-bumped everyone, Katie made some sarcastic remark about the teacher she was about to be forced to deal with, Sara didn’t say much of anything, no one cared what Klaude said if he had said anything at all, and we all headed to our lockers. Mine was conveniently just across the hall from where we sat in the morning, so it took me no time at all to get there, grab my binder, and head off towards my English class.

            On the way to my class, I actually saw Ravenna and waved to her, but she just gave me a strange look and kept going. I felt kind of embarrassed when a few of the other kids snickered at me and I heard a couple people say things along the lines of “look at the freshman trying to flirt with the senior” but I shrugged it off; I realized now what Ravenna had meant back at the hold when she said that I “was the one in the hall” and I also realized that she wouldn’t know who I was until sometime through her second period class.

_Time travel is weird._

_Damn straight it is._

I shook my head and walked into my English room, to be greeted by my friend Renard. We sat together in the back of the class and talked about all kinds of shit every day, ranging from physics to chemistry to fantasy to writing to whatever the hell else happened to be on our minds that day. Today, however, my mind was simply clouded with thoughts of the hold and making it through the next two days so I could just go to semi-formal and be done with school for a while. Unfortunately, I couldn’t really talk about any of that with him, for obvious reasons, so we just kind of sat there in relative silence, for the first time in quite a while. He tried to make some small talk every now and again but I just kind of hummed my responses.

            The rest of the day went pretty well the same way. I went to math, and didn’t really pay much attention to anything. I looked at the handout, figured out what to do on my own before the lesson even started, and then simply put my head down on the desk and tuned everything out. Lunch would have been a lot more interesting, since Ravenna was there, but the rest of our friends were _also_ there, so we still couldn’t talk about the hold or really give any solid explanations for how we met, and that caused a lot of awkwardness. I got my semi-formal ticket, though, so that was good, I guess. Fourth period—history—I had gotten so bored that I decided to discretely mess around with my illusions. I sat alone in history so that I could properly focus—I would just talk all class if someone sat beside me—and I sat in the back-left corner, completely out of sight of the teacher’s desk and behind all of my peers, which gave me a convenient way to mess around without anyone noticing. Fifth period—business—I had gotten a little more bold with my illusions; I started messing around with the teacher—making her think she accidentally drew a dick on the chalkboard while the whole class laughed, making her think she sat on a pin on her chair, which she blamed Craig for, so on and so forth. I also made one kid think that he spilled his whiteout all over this girl’s dress but made it so _only_ he thought so; he kept apologizing profusely and trying to wipe the whiteout off the girl with his hands, which essentially led to him being called a crazy perv and being sent to the office for a while. It was kind of mean, but the kid didn’t get into any real trouble, so I didn’t feel too bad about it. When the final bell of the day went off, I was so relieved to be done for the day that I practically _skipped_ to my locker. I got there, threw my binder back into my locker, and headed out to the front of the school to meet everyone. Silvara looked as happy as I did to be done for the day, or maybe she was just happy in general—I don’t know; I didn’t have any classes with any of my close friends but she did, so things were a little different on my end anyways. We all walked together and talked as far as we could, Sara being the first to go—her house was pretty close to the school—then Katie, after a while longer, Meagan and Klaude, and it was just Silvara and me again. Ravenna wasn’t used to our routine so she hadn’t met us outside to walk, but for all we knew, she could’ve taken a bus anyways. When it was just me and Silvara again, we both sighed.

            She beat me to the punch, though. “That was absolutely terrible.”

            I just chuckled. “Yeah, that was… really boring. Like… more boring than our walk to Sword-Arm Hall boring…”

            She groaned and ran the fingers of one hand through her hair, yawning. “I didn’t realize how tired someone could get from doing nothing all day…”

            I mimicked her yawn and cracked my neck loudly, to loosen up a little. “I hear ya. I can’t wait until semi-formal is done; then I can just go back to the hold and train some more.”

            Silvara perked up at that. “You’re still hard-set on the dance, hm?”

            I looked at her like she had spoken a different language. “Well obviously, why else would I even be here right now? If not for you and the dance, I probably wouldn’t have bothered coming back to Earth for quite some time. There’s nothing to really do here…”

            “Wouldn’t you miss your mom and brother, though?”

            “My mom, I would miss, yes. My brother, however… I know you had a good relationship with Liam and all but my brother is barely tolerable.”

            Her smile lessened at the mention of her brother but didn’t disappear and she chuckled lightly at the mention of mine. “Fair enough, I guess. Well, only two days to go, right?” Her smile brightened again.

            “Yep, only two days left until we go on our date.”

“There are only two more days until our date!”

            We had both spoken at relatively the same time and we just glanced at each other and laughed cheerily. Unfortunately, we were coming up on Silvara’s house now, so our walk had ended. We hugged, said goodbye, and she disappeared into her house as I headed further down the street, turning the next corner, and walking less than an extra minute before reaching my own house.

            After I got home, I simply told my mom how my day was, tried my best to ignore Alex, and then played on my computer for a while before going to lie down.

            _Man, even gaming is boring now. We could be doing ninety percent of the shit they’re doing in these games in real life._

_Yeah, but this will probably become a haven for you later. It’s boring now because the hold is still new. When the novelty wears off, you’ll come back here to spend time with your family and you’ll relish in it._

_If you say so…_

I looked at the clock on my nightstand and it read “6:43 p.m.” in blocky, red, digital font.

            _Well, fuck me…_

_I would but you know how it is, being a mental manifestation of your subconscious and all._

I groaned and sat up, rubbing my eyes with my palms.

            _Wanna go see what Vara’s up to?_

_But then I won’t have any time left to be alone with you!_

_We’re gonna go see what Vara’s up to._

_Kay, cool._

I shook my head, grinning, threw my clothes back on—I took them off to lie down—and then went back downstairs. When I got down there, my mom was giving me a strange look.

            “Are you okay, Tanis…?”

            I chuckled sheepishly and leaned against the wall in the kitchen, where she was making something or another for dinner. “Yeah, I’m good. I’m just tired but I don’t really wanna sleep yet, y’know?”

            She nodded sagely. “Yeah, I know what you mean. There’s just always something to be done, huh?”

            I chuckled. She didn’t know how right she was. “Yeah, pretty much.” I walked over to the coat rack by the front door and pulled my sweater on. “Is it cool if I go out for a bit?”

            “Yeah, go ahead! I’m just making spaghetti so you can reheat some when you get home.”

            “Alrighty, thanks mom; I’ll see you in a few hours.” I smiled back to her and walked out the door, only to run head-first into Silvara.

            She looked up at me from her new spot on the ground and I looked back at her, a little dazed. We both chuckled.

            “Sorry about that, Vara.” I grinned and held out a hand.

            She took it and pulled herself back up to her feet. “It happens.” She shrugged. “You were bored, too?”

            I just slowly shook my head. “This place is so boring now. I… have a feeling… that it’ll be good to come back here every now and again later but for now, it’s just dreadful.”

            She nodded solemnly. “Wanna go to the park?”

            I shrugged. “We ain’t got nothin’ better to do.”

            There was a small park nearby that no one except for really bored teenagers ever went to. We fit the profile, so we headed for it. It was a quaint little park, with two sets of swings, a few slides and such for smaller kids, monkey bars—the whole shebang. There were a few benches around as well for parents to sit on to watch their children while they played. When we got there, that was exactly what we saw. There were a few small kids—maybe six or seven years old each—that were climbing all over all the equipment. One had taken the middle seat on the adult-sized swing set, so that was a bust, and there were a few women sitting at the different benches, seemingly gossiping about whatever.

            Silvara crossed her arms beside me. “Just our luck, the _one_ day we decide to come here, there are already a bunch of people here.”

            I scratched my head, my lips forming a tight line. I looked around to see if there was anything else to do but all I could see was trees. That gave me an idea. “Hey, Vara,” I casually threw an arm over her shoulders and directed her body towards the small forest, “wanna go take a walk through the woods?” I grinned.

            She shook her head, smiling. “Why not?”

            “Awesome!”

            I removed my arm from around her and we stalked off into the woods. Now, I find there’s a common theme within woods these days. Since normal people don’t usually go into them that often, it gives the creative, close-to-nature types a chance to mess around in there, and they always leave behind such cool stuff. So, after a few moments of walking, I wasn’t surprised to see a large archway made of two, young, bent-over trees that had been wrapped together.

            Silvara gave a small squee when she saw it and ran over to investigate. “It’s like a gate to Narnia or something; it’s so cool!”

            I chuckled and decided to have a little fun. I sent some mist through the archway and had the mist collect behind it in the shape of a man with goat’s legs and a lantern.

            After a few moments of Silvara not noticing it, I made it speak with a light British accent. “Uhm… Hello. Who are you?”

            Silvara whipped around and saw none other than Mr. Thomas standing there, lantern in hand.

            Silvara gave him an incredulous look, mouth agape, and then after a moment of staring, closed her mouth and glared at me. She was only pretending to be upset, though, if the twitching at the corners of her mouth was anything to go by. “You’re an idiot.”

            I laughed. “And you’re gullible.” I gave her a shit-eating grin and winked.

            _Ping_.

            She whipped around and fired an arrow of pure light straight through the illusion of the goat-man, causing him to disperse into mist. She turned and grinned at me.

            I frowned.

            _Projectiles are such a pain in the ass._

_Yeah, fooling inanimate objects with a constant velocity is a lot harder than fooling people that have muscles that we can trick into contracting._

I tapped my chin and conjured up a few targets, making them spin around us slowly. “Wanna practice?” I grinned.

            Silvara tilted her head. “I thought we were supposed to come back to Earth to relax…”

            “Yeah, and look how that turned out for us.” I laughed. “Besides, it was just a suggestion.” I shrugged and went to wave my hand past all the targets, when Silvara spoke up.

            “No, I think it sounds fun! I was just making sure it wouldn’t be a bother.” She grinned sheepishly.

            “Well, I think it’s settled, then.” I grinned. “See if you can keep up! Just… don’t shoot me. Wounds aren’t nearly as easy to heal here as they are in The Realm, remember.”

            She rolled her eyes. “I’m only going to be aiming at the targets; don’t worry.”

            I started her off with stationary targets—those stereotypical archery targets that were white circles with the red circles painted smaller and smaller until there was just a bulls-eye dot in the middle—that she quickly dispatched and then I moved on to making the targets spin slowly around her. It didn’t seem to make much of a difference, so I decided to step the difficulty up significantly. I started spinning the targets faster than I could even keep track of them, as they rose and fell as well, ducking in and out from behind tree branches and leaves as they spun. Silvara was keeping up well with them, though, dispersing each of them with arrow after arrow; her body twisted and turned, her head and eyes darting around in perfect sync with her hands as she shot down each of my targets perfectly. She had started to sweat by the time it had gotten dark outside, even with it being as cold as it was, but she was still keeping up with the targets. I started giving them a faint glow when it got a little too dark—it wouldn’t have been any fun if it was unfair—and she kept going. Her sweat glistening in the moonlight, her hair almost glowing as it billowed around her, she bounced from foot to foot, dancing across logs and stones, taking down each target. She was graceful about it, though calculated. It was beautiful to watch.

            _You mean_ she _is beautiful to watch._

_While that is also true, no. I mean the display is beautiful. Her movements are so fluid and yet precise; it looks more like she’s dancing than training. I didn’t even know a person could do the kinds of things she’s doing right now; it’s incredible._

_Well, a normal person_ couldn’t _do what she’s doing right now._

_True, I suppose._

Eventually, however, her physical body couldn’t take it anymore and she started to slow down; she had missed two targets when I stood and cast them all away. She had shot two more arrows in the time it took her to realize the targets were gone. When she stopped, she turned to me, frowning. “Hey, I wasn’t…” She took a deep breath. “I wasn’t done!” She was panting a little and her head fell as she put her hands on her knees.

            I chuckled and crossed my arms. “Are you sure about that…?”

            Still panting, she wordlessly lifted one hand, and then lifted a specific finger.

            I laughed. “Oh, come now; it’s nothing to be upset about. You’ve been at it for a couple hours now.”

            She looked up, her chest still heaving. “I… I have…?”

            I gestured upwards and she stood to her full height and craned her neck to see the moon hanging lazily above us, stars twinkling in the dark of night.

            “Oh…” She laughed breathily. “It felt like just a few minutes…”

            “Well, time flies and all that.” I grinned, patting a spot beside me on the log I had occupied during her performance.

            Her bow flashed and became a badge again and she shoved it into her pocket before she trudged over and slumped down onto the log, turning sideways, back towards me, and lying down, putting her head in my lap. She looked up at me with puppy-dog eyes when I shifted a little, trying to get more comfortable. “You don’t mind, do you…?”

            I rolled my eyes and chuckled. “Not at all, Vara, go ahead and rest.” I smiled down at her and she smiled back, closing her eyes and crossing her arms over her chest.

            I toyed a little with her hair while she lied there—she didn’t seem to mind, and if she did, she never said anything—and after a minute or so, her breathing had slowed back to normal. We sat like that for a while—I don’t really know how long—in complete silence, aside from the sounds of our light breathing.

            Suddenly, there was a shrill and piercing, metallic ringing in my ears and Silvara was startled so badly, she actually lost her balance and fell off the log.

            It had made me jump a little as well, but I recovered quickly enough. I covered my face with my hand and reached into my vibrating pocket.

            _I fucking forgot phones existed for a little while there._

_Yeah, apparently so did Vara._

I chuckled and slid my finger across the large touch screen, putting the glass up to my ear. “…This is Tanis.”

            I heard my mom’s voice screech back at me from the small device. “Were you planning on coming home at some time tonight?”

            I pulled the phone from my ear and looked at its face, reading the “10:56” at the top-right corner. I put it back against my ear. “Oh, shit, sorry, mom; we lost track of time, I guess.” I scratched my head, grinning sheepishly, not that she could see it, but whatever. Silvara had righted herself by now and was sitting beside me on the log again, kicking her feet idly. “I’ll start back now. See you in a few.”

            “Alright, I love you!”

            “Love you, too, mom.” I ended the call and locked my phone, slipping it back into the pocket I had apparently left it in.

            Silvara looked at me, her eyes still half-lidded, some leaves and twigs stuck in her hair from the fall. “Why, what time is it?”

            I grinned. “It’s almost eleven.” She muttered something sleepily as I stood and leaned over her, picking the stuff out of her hair.

            “What’re you…?”

            “You got some tree-junk in your hair. Just sit still.” I meticulously picked out every bit of non-hair matter I found, throwing it all, piece-by-piece, to the forest floor. When I was finished, I stepped back and ruffled her hair, grinning.

            Silvara just glared up at me, trying to use her hands to correct the new mess I had made. It wasn’t so dark, however, that I didn’t also notice the faint blush on her cheeks.

            I smiled and held out a hand. “C’mon, let’s go; it’s late.” My body decided to punctuate that statement by forcing me to yawn.

            She caught my yawn and returned it, taking my hand and pulling herself up to her feet. She patted all the leaves and twigs off of the back of her jeans and fell into step beside me.

            I smirked and commented when she was wiping the stuff off her back. “Y’know I could’ve helped with that, too.” I winked at her.

            She rolled her eyes and slugged me in the shoulder. “Yeah right, perv.”

            I shrugged. “Can’t blame a guy for trying.”

            We chatted idly on the way back but mostly just enjoyed the view of the night sky and each other’s company. When we got to my place, she hugged me, as she always did, but then also gave me a quick kiss on the cheek before giving a hasty “see ya tomorrow!” and quickly walked down the street back to her own house. I felt my face flush a little while I stood there, grinning like an idiot, a little stunned.

            _I guess I need to randomly take her to the forest more often._

_Kay, now you’re making it sound rapey._

_True…_

I chuckled and gave Silvara’s form one last glance, before turning and walking into the house. I explained to my mom what had happened—excluding the whole “I can make illusions and Silvara was practicing shooting them down” bit—and then I reheated some of the spaghetti my mom had made and scarfed it down pretty quick; I hadn’t realized until I took the first bite just how hungry I was—not having to eat for three days without any kind of repercussions does that to a guy. That was another thing I forgot to mention. After having a body that couldn’t physically tire, being in one that could seemed very strange. When I was taken to the hold, it was like all my normal aches and pains were gone—and it was incredible—but nothing felt out of place or anything. When I went back to Earth, whenever I moved, I could feel my stomach lurch around inside me; I could feel the air travelling down my throat and into my lungs; I felt every muscle relax and contract as I moved. After a couple of hours, I was used to it again, having grown up with it literally my entire life, but for those first hours back on Earth, it felt very strange and kind of uncomfortable.

            Anyway, that aside, after I ate, and then ate another plate’s worth, and then had some garlic bread, I went to bed. I fell asleep in a mere few minutes only to be awakened at what seemed to be way too early of an hour. Groggy and incoherent, I flopped onto my side to look at my alarm clock.

            “7:25 a.m.”

            _…_

_…_

_…Fuck._

 

* * *

 

 

I rolled onto my back and pressed hard onto my eyes with my palms, forcing blood to rush to them when I released the pressure. It probably wasn’t that good for my eyes, but I mean, hey, I still had twenty-twenty, so it couldn’t be _that_ bad. Either way, it did what I wanted it to, and I was able to see relatively clearly even through the haze of sleepiness. My legs slumped over the side of my bed and I just let the weight of them pull me up to a standing position. I threw my clothes on and plodded down the stairs. I didn’t have time to shower _and_ eat breakfast, so I weighed my decisions and decided to take a shower. Unfortunately, that involved me getting _un_ dressed again but I quickly got over it, as the scalding-hot water cascaded over my exhausted body, loosening up every muscle that felt tense and opening every pore that seemed blocked. It woke me up quite a bit as well, which was always a plus, and after I scrubbed some standard product into my hair and soaped up the rest of everything else, I rinsed off, dried myself with the nearest not-still-damp towel, and slipped back into my clothes, this time feeling nice and squeaky-clean and refreshed. I headed out the door of the bathroom, greeted my mom, then quickly un-greeted her, and stepped out the front door. My hair was still a little wet—I could never dry it properly with just a towel; it was too thick—so when the cold, winter air flowed over it, I felt it stiffen slightly as it began to freeze. I zipped my sweater up and stuffed my hands into my pockets, sauntering down my driveway and then farther still, to go meet up with Silvara and head to what would surely be another incredibly boring day of school.

            It didn’t disappoint; the day had gone by without anything interesting much at all happening. When lunch-time came around, Ravenna had gotten more talkative among our group of usual friends, so that was good, but we still couldn’t talk about the badges or anything, so there was still a lot of tension whenever Silvara, Ravenna, or I would talk to one another. Not a bad kind of tension, we were just barely holding back our excitement. We did, however, remember to tell her where to meet us after school so she could walk with us. I messed around with a few more teachers and students, but never did anything that exciting, for fear of giving anything at all away. I did prove a couple things, though. I could make illusions that were strictly localized to one person. I could make just one person at a time see or hear or feel something and no one else would be the wiser. I made some guy hear some girl’s voice—a girl I’d noticed he’d been glancing at all class—and I made her say something along the lines of “why won’t he just tell me he likes me?” so he did. It actually turned out that she was into him as well, so I kind of accidentally did a good service. It was pretty cool and it felt good to have done something like that for someone, even if I had originally intended to make the guy embarrass the hell out of himself.

            Either way, the day went by without much happening and I quickly found myself walking out the front doors of the school, Silvara and Ravenna in tow. We met up with the others and, as the day before, we walked and chatted about whatever came up until the others had to leave, one after the other, and all that was left was me, Silvara, and Ravenna.

            As soon as the last of our friends was out of earshot, Ravenna heaved a sigh and threw her head back. “ _Finally,_ we can talk about exciting stuff!”

            Silvara and I chuckled before I spoke. “Has anything in particular been eating at you?”

            She grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me back and forth, while yelling right in my face. “WHAT THE HELL IS YOUR POWER?!”

            She stopped shaking me after a moment of me not responding, and I waited for my balance to come back before I responded. “I thought you all knew already…?”

            Silvara shook her head and spoke up this time. “The only ones who know are you, me, and the First Four.”

            “The First Four…?” I knitted my eyebrows.

            “That’s what the other recruits have been calling Cealum, Sylar, Lantigua, and Kai, since they were like… the first ones there, before the rest of us.”

            “I suppose that’s fitting.”

             Ravenna yelled from beside me again. “Hey! I asked you a question, remember!”

            I smiled sheepishly. “Sorry, I thought I told everyone, though. Does seriously no one know what my summoning is?”

            Ravenna glared daggers at me and balled her hands into fists. I smirked. Silvara answered. “No, you never actually told any of them what you did; they saw what they saw but you didn’t explain it, so they all think you’re just super-overpowered or something.”

            “Huh… well, that’s interesting.”

            Ravenna took a step closer to me. “Tanis…”

            “I don’t know if I want to tell anyone now… If they all think I’m just some super-cool wizard guy, then why tell them any different?” I smirked, glancing to Ravenna at my side who was obviously getting very disappointed—she showed it by being angry, but I could tell she was just upset in general.

            She punched me in the arm, hard, and Silvara giggled. “You’re such a jerk!”

            “I was just kidding!” I rubbed my arm, pouting. “Geez… I cast illusions. None of it is real or physical. They just seem so real that people can feel them and stuff. It’s a weird thing, but it’s my thing.” I knitted my brows for a moment before speaking again, slightly more sternly. “I’m actually serious, though. If the rest of the recruits don’t know how my summoning works, I think I’d rather keep it that way. I trust you two, and the… First Four and I may come to trust the rest of them in time, but for now… just in case, let’s keep it under wraps, alright? I mean, this is a war we’re talking about here; there could be spies and information could be leaked.” I couldn’t help but think of that Alec guy that I had trained with; there was just something about him that seemed off to me. “If the other holds find out that my illusions are simply that, then the fear from what I did will be gone faster than we can account for.”

            The girls nodded in unison. “We’ll keep it a secret, Tanis.”

            “Yeah! We’ve got your back!” Ravenna slapped me on the back for emphasis.

            _And you’ve got their fronts._

_I was wondering when you were going to make your horrid return._

_What can I say? It’s like I’m a part of you!_

I sighed. The girls gave me strange looks before I realized it was an outward sigh as opposed to an internal one. “Sorry, thanks, guys!” I smiled and they just looked at each other and shrugged, before smiling back.

            We walked for a bit, and we were coming up on Silvara’s house now, and I turned to Ravenna. “Hey, where is it you live again…?”

            “I never said.” She smirked before pointing off to a large, gray building that could be seen in the distance, over the tops of the other houses and trees that surrounded us. “There’s an apartment building over that way; I live there.”

            “Well, I’d offer to walk you home, but I’m gonna be bored as fuck if I go home, so I’m just gonna chill with Vara for a bit, if that’s cool.” I turned to Silvara at the end of my statement, to which she simply gave me a closed-eyed smile and a nod.

            Ravenna fiddled with the end of the zipper on her sweater before asking in a low tone. “It wouldn’t be too much of an issue if I hung out, too, would it…?”

            Silvara turned and looked at the girl as though she had three heads. “Of course not!”

            Ravenna’s expression quickly went back to her strong, confident one and she pumped a fist into the air. “Awesome!” I noticed she had also stopped fiddling with her zipper.

            I grinned, shaking my head.

            _People’s tells are so interesting…_

_I feel like that’s cheating—knowing what someone is feeling just because they’re doing something they can’t control._

_Oh, there’s no such thing as cheating. You either use the tools at your disposal or you don’t. The only time people won’t use a specific tool is because of morals; I try to have as few of those as I can without becoming a total douche canoe._

_Yeah, I’ve noticed._

_Man… Fuck you…_

We got to Silvara’s house and we all took our sweaters and jackets off, Ravenna and Silvara tossing their bags into a corner—I didn’t take my bag to and from school; I never did homework really because my courses never gave homework that actually got marked that I couldn’t just finish in class—and I walked into her living room and plopped down onto the couch. Ravenna took the hint and sat down as well, stretching out her arms and legs before looking around. Silvara’s house was pretty neat; there were knick-knacks everywhere—on the walls on shelves, hanging from the ceiling on more shelves that had been built into the ceiling, on the tables there were a few statuettes, and so on—and they all looked pretty cool. What was even cooler, though, was that a lot of the stuff around had actually been hand-made by Silvara herself; she always had a knack for the artsy stuff—something that I severely lacked—so it was always a joy to see all the awesome stuff littering her walls. All the shelves were made of a nice, dark wood, too, so it all made me feel very calm and peaceful; it was very homey.

            After looking at all the neat stuff, Ravenna had seen the TV and what lay beneath it and she hollered out “You have a PS3?!”

            Silvara laughed as she entered the living room as well, though her features were somewhat morose. “Yeah, we do. It was my brother’s.” She smiled, albeit a little sadly.

            Ravenna didn’t seem to catch her tone, because she continued on with just as much excitement as before. “Do you have any good games for it?!” She hopped up off the couch and strode over to the TV, then crouched, looking at the piles of game-cases beside the PS3 that lay on a small shelf below the television stand.

            Silvara quickly righted her expression and had become cheery again. “We have most of the better ones. Skyrim, Obivion, Infamous, Assassin’s Creed, Diablo, and so on, any of those interest you?”

            Ravenna looked up to Silvara, a serious expression on her face. “Literally all of those interest me.” She smiled and then chuckled. “I haven’t played Oblivion before; is it alright if I play that?”

            “Sure!”

            I butted in now. “Have you played Skyrim yet?”

            Ravenna gave me a strange look. “Uh… No, why?”

            “Play Skyrim first.”

            “…Why?”

            “Oblivion is too good. If you play it, _then_ Skyrim, you’ll get bored of Skyrim really fast. Trust me.”

            “I… Okay.”

            Silvara just shook her head and laughed. “He gets very serious about video games; just ignore him. Do what you’d like.”

            I shot Silvara a hurt look but she just smirked and looked back to Ravenna.

            “I guess I’ll play Skyrim first.”

            I whooped, throwing my fist into the air and Silvara groaned. Ravenna looked on us with mild amusement before going about swapping out whatever disk was already in the PS3 with the Skyrim disk. She grabbed a random nearby controller, turned it on, and began playing.

            While she played Skyrim, occasionally screaming at bandits or guards and getting slightly-too-excited whenever she saw a horse, Silvara sat on her laptop and wrote for a while—she had been writing a book for a couple years now; it was about mythical monsters living secretly among humans and there was like a civil war among some of them and what have you, but she hadn’t written that part yet. Every time she wrote a few new chapters, she would give me a dramatic reading of them—I could easily have read them myself but it was more fun that way.

            Anyway, she wrote, Ravenna played Skyrim, and I dicked around on my phone for a bit. When I got bored of that, I dicked around with my illusions for a bit. When I got _really_ bored, I started fucking around with Ravenna, making her see enemies or hear explosions and the like while she played. Of course, I made it so that _only_ she saw or heard anything, so when Silvara asked what she was getting so worked up about, the only response she got was Ravenna pointing frantically at the screen, shouting something about spriggans. After Silvara tried for a while to get her to see that there was nothing there—doing all manner of things, like taking the controller and not moving at all, or swinging her great-axe wildly, fast-travelling to a town, where monsters couldn’t get into, and so forth, which I easily assuaged by making random townspeople seem to attack her and made it look like Silvara was actually hitting the monsters and being hit by them—I couldn’t hold back anymore and I burst into a giggle fit. Ravenna had been right in the middle of literally pressing Silvara’s face to the screen and yelling “Right there!” when I started laughing like a madman, almost falling off of the couch.

            Silvara broke free of Ravenna’s grip and turned around to look at me quizzically. I think she was about to ask me what I was laughing at when it clicked in her mind and she whipped the controller at me, hitting me directly in the dick. It wasn’t the balls, so I didn’t throw up or anything, but it still hurt like a motherfucker. She gave a “humph” and crossed her arms, plopping down into a chair on the opposite side of the room—as far away from me as she could get without straight-up leaving the room—and refused to even look at me for a few minutes as I tried to nurse my crotch back to health. Ravenna had been confused by the whole situation until she looked back to the screen and saw that everything was gone, while I was writhing around, holding my manhood in a protective grip. It clicked for her, then, as well, and she gave me a flat stare before sitting back down on the table and continued playing. There was a short, wooden table in front of the couch; Ravenna sat there instead of on the couch because she couldn’t read the in-game text from the couch—it was too far away—without her glasses. Yeah, apparently she wore glasses. Weird.

            Shortly after I confirmed my dick hadn’t been broken or something, I apologized half-heartedly to both of them and Silvara silently came back to the couch and continued writing.

            _I’m gonna have a bruise now or something._

_That’s what you get for having fun. I told you before; that’s my job._

_Screw you…_

_Well, I don’t think you’d want to right now, given that—_

_—shut up…_

After all that, the rest of the visit was pretty well just the three of us talking about random stuff and playing video games until her parents decided to usher us out. They had come home around two hours after we got there but retired downstairs without saying much. I put my sweater and shoes back on, gave Silvara a hug, and then said goodbye to both her and Ravenna—Ravenna’s house was in the opposite direction of mine—and then headed home. When I got home, I just ate some left-over pork chops my mom had made and then went to bed—it was around eleven o’clock by the time I got to lie down.

            Tomorrow was semi-formal. It was gonna be so awesome; I’d finally get to dance with Silvara! With that thought in mind, I tore off all my clothes and flopped down into my bed lazily. I realized, as I lied down, that I had forgotten something.

            _What the hell is Ravenna’s summoning…?_


	5. The Call-Back and a Date Delayed

            I woke up the next day and looked over to my alarm clock. It wasn’t there. Instead, all I saw was a tall, stone pillar and a purple carpet, with gold lace along the edges. I sat up and looked around, mildly confused.

            “You’re awake.” There was a cool, detached voice from behind my bed, which was my new bed that sat up against the wall at the side of the throne room. In case I didn’t mention before, Lantigua had put a bed up against the wall in the corner of the throne room, just to the right of the door when you walked in. I don’t know why they made the throne room my makeshift bedroom, but I didn’t really mind, so I never bothered to bring it up with them.

            I turned and saw that it was Alec who was apparently watching me sleep. He was averting his gaze from mine, though, and just stared at the doors to the throne room. “Uhm… Yeah, I’m awake. But why am I here…?” I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes with my palms and tore my blanket off.

            Apparently, my clothes still weren’t on, because I noticed Alec’s face tense and a small blush creep across his cheeks as he stammered. “A-Aren’t you going to put some clothes on first, Tanis…?”

            I chuckled. “We’re both men here; it’s nothing you haven’t seen before I assure you.” I stood and walked to the small nightstand near the bed, where my clothes laid, and I slipped them on. I knew he wouldn’t be trying to look and I don’t have that much shame to begin with, so I didn’t care much that I was naked in front of the guy.

            Once they were on, Alec spoke again. “Now that you’re ready, we should probably head to the training room. Cealum has something to tell us all, apparently.”

            “Kay, cool.” I thought for a moment. I thought about two things, actually, but one was slightly more prevalent. I turned to the cloaked man and knitted my brows, as he stared blankly at me with his one, icy-blue eye. “Alec, were you watching me sleep…?”

            I saw his eye dart to one side and then back before he said anything, his grip tightening on the staff I just noticed he had in his hands—it was the same one as when we were practicing, black with a gem at one end. “Well, I wasn’t _watching_ you; I was just waiting for you to… wake up. It’s different.”

            “And why do you have your staff out?”

            He gave me a calm grin. “Oh, this?” He hefted his staff a little. “I just like to use it as a walking stick. I have one just like it back on Earth.”

            I nodded slowly, eyeing him. “Fair enough, I suppose. Alright, let’s go.”

            He nodded and strode over towards the door and I followed him at a relatively sedate pace, conjuring up a staff of my own. I don’t know why I did; I guess it just made me feel like I was more in my role if I had it out. It made me feel like a classic RPG mage—basically, it was just cool.

            Oh, right, the second thing I was thinking about; I didn’t have my clothes on when I woke up here. Since the body I had here was a mental image or whatever, I figured it would just always have clothes, but I guess since I didn’t have clothes when I went to sleep, I wouldn’t have any when I woke up. There were clothes on the nightstand, however, which is where I would normally keep clothes, so I guess that’s why they appeared there instead of on me. It seemed to be yet another strange quality of The Realm; it was just something interesting I noticed.

            Anyways, we headed off toward the sparring room and met up with Silvara half-way there. “Hey, Vara, what’s goin’ on? Do you know?”

            She shrugged and yawned. “Nope, I’ve got no idea… All I know is that they collected us sometime in the middle of the night, ‘cause I went to sleep in my own bed and woke up here.”

            I laughed. “Same. I guess they just had bad timing.”

            Alec stayed silent throughout that exchange, just occasionally casting furtive glances between Silvara and me.

 _There’s_ definitely _something weird about this guy. He seems_ way _too interested in everything but he never even asks any questions._

_Maybe you should ask them for him._

_…What?_

_If he’s hiding something, maybe he doesn’t want to talk for risk of saying anything he’s not supposed to._

_That makes sense… but what would I even ask him?_

_I don’t know. Ask him anything, and just pay attention to how he reacts about certain subjects. Learn through his tells instead of through his words. That’s what you usually do for other people._

_…Normally, I would ignore you out of pure spite alone, but that actually sounds like a good idea. It’ll have to wait for now, though; we’re almost at the sparring room._

            I turned my attention back outward just as we were coming up on the sparring room’s door. Y’know, we spent a _lot_ of time in this room. It was like our all-purpose room. Everyone always met there instead of any kind of meeting room; we all, of course, could train there; it’s where the First Four brought all the recruits immediately. Other than the throne room, I’m pretty sure it was the only room in the entire hold I’d even been to.

_We should explore a little later._

_I wonder if they have some kind of library._

_Why would you want to go to the library?_

_Well, a lot of the history of this place is still a mystery to you, and Cealum and the others don’t really have time to sit us down and talk us through anything that’s happened; maybe there’s an archive where we can just learn on our own. Who knows, maybe it’ll help us with the war?_

_Maybe… I suppose it’s worth checking out, at least._

_Alright, but you’re reading; I fuckin’ hate that shit._

_…Then why was the library your first thought?_

_Because it was yours and I’m you, stupid._

_Okay… but then wouldn’t I also have to hate reading…?_

_That’s obviously not at all how this works. I’m the fun part of you, remember; fun people don’t read._

            I sighed as we reached the sparring room and walked in to see Cealum pacing back and forth in front of the rest of the gathered recruits, including Ravenna and Sri.

_I need to introduce myself to the other recruits later…_

_Yeah, especially if you’re going to be their King soon._

_Hey, that hasn’t been finalized yet._

_Didn’t you_ want _to be their King?_

_Eh. I guess. I mean… that’s kind of what I asked the badge for, in a sense, but I didn’t necessarily actually want the title itself._

_Well, too late now, loser._

            I sighed yet again and walked in to join the other recruits, all standing and waiting for Cealum to say something. When he noticed the three of us walk in, he turned to the group, smiled a little, gave a light clap, and began to speak. “Now that you’re all here, I can tell you _why_ you’re all here!” He put his hands behind himself like a general and his face became slightly more serious. “As you know, you’ve been recruited for war. The whole thing has been an interesting and temporarily overwhelming thought for most of you, I’d imagine. Believe me, I get it. We took you from your homes—kind of—and brought you here and just expected you all to want to join. Most people do want to once they learn what kinds of things we can promise,” he tapped his goggles, “but regardless, the fun is over. We are the weakest hold right now—our numbers are low and we’re all more-or-less without any real practice. Tanis,” he nodded to me, a thin smile on his lips, “has helped delay any attacks against us, and Lantigua has gotten word that the rumours of the “Demon of the Rose” have spread to the Shield-Bearers, but even if they are afraid now, that fear won’t last forever, and they _will_ attack. The Sword-Arms have been preparing for something; it’s all been very hush-hush but they’re training and doing more drills than they usually do.” He paused and looked to the ground for a moment before looking back up. Everyone was hanging on his words. His arms came out from behind his back and he spoke more softly, almost sadly. “Look everyone… I’m not going to sugar-coat it; we’re pretty well fucked… We’re in a really bad spot right now and we’ll stay that way unless we can get more wielders on our side. I’ve recruited the nine of you on my own, and Sylar recruited Tanis and Silvara, and while we’re very grateful you all accepted so easily and are working hard to help, you lot just aren’t enough. We need more numbers or we’re going to crash and burn.” He let out a deep, slightly shaky breath that I don’t think he even knew he was holding. “I need to get some of you guys to help me recruit more wielders… The thing is, I don’t know if there’s any real talent anywhere; my goggles help, but I can only spend so much time away from the hold and I’ve run out of potential recruits.” He held his hands out to gesture at the whole group. “You eleven were the last viable recruits I had found that weren’t snatched up by the other holds before I could get to you.” His hands dropped limp by his side. “And I’m out of ideas.”

_Yeah, it’s not like he can just send out adverts or anything, either…_

_He’d have to track down each individual person on his own, watch them for a while to make sure they would be good additions, and then bring them back to the hold. It just takes too much time and he’s the only one on the field doing it._

            I was a little surprised to see Silvara’s hand shoot up before anyone else. When no one else seemed to do anything, she just kind of put it back down and started talking. “Cealum… I know your goggles show you how smart and strong people are.” He nodded, his brows knitting together. “And you obviously don’t have time to get to know everyone who has high ratings or whatever before recruiting them, but you kind of need to in order to make sure they’ll be good to come here and not freak out or not get along with everyone and stuff.” He nodded again, a little slower this time, really focusing on Silvara. He obviously thought she was going somewhere with this. “Well, I mean… I don’t know if they’re the smartest or most physically capable people or anything, but like… couldn’t we just bring our friends here? If they’re our friends, then we already know them; they’ll fit in quickly and we’ll know that they’re trustworthy. I mean, I wouldn’t bring _all_ my friends here, ‘cause a lot of them probably _would_ freak out, but that’s the thing; I _know_ that. We all know our friends. We know which ones will be good additions to the hold as far as personalities go. We just need you to check and see if they have the right qualities. So why not just have us recommend people and you go check ‘em out? And then ask whoever you bring here if they have any people to recommend; we could get a lot of recruits pretty quick that way, right? I mean… you’d still have to check them all out first, but we could at least skip the getting-to-know-them part.”

            Cealum walked slowly over to Silvara and stared her down. She shrunk back a little in her place and he just smiled, before taking her into a tight hug. She looked a little taken aback but quickly recovered. “Silvara, I could kiss you. I won’t, because I’m pretty sure Tanis would beat the shit out of me, but I could.” He laughed and took a step back while Silvara was forced to recover again, blushing a little this time. I shook my head, smiling sheepishly, and he continued. “I feel kind of dumb for not thinking of that myself, honestly… Regardless, that’s a fantastic idea, Vara. My issue with letting other people recruit was that they wouldn’t be able to determine how skilled they would be, and my issue with recruiting on my own was being forced to get to know them. I never thought of just putting the two together…” His head lowered further and further as he spoke, until he finished. Then, his head shot right back up and he clapped his hands together, raising his voice again, a smile reappearing on his lips. “Alright, everyone, I’ve got a new task! I’ll need you all to write down lists of names and addresses of people that you think would make good wielders! Write down as many as you can think of, so long as you believe they’ll get along and be of some use. As much as quantity can help, we still need quality, so don’t just put random names, alright?” His face darkened slightly again. “However, we’ll still need time to train and recruit them all… And if either of the other holds decides to come for us, we’ll still be in a bad spot…”

            It was my turn to speak up this time. “Cealum, I could cloak the hold. I don’t need constant concentration for my summoning to work. In fact, it takes conscious thought to get rid of the things I conjure. So… if you give me a few hours, I could make the whole place look just like every other patch of grassland in The Realm.”

            He started walking towards me the same way he had walked towards Silvara and I held my hands up placatingly. “Tanis—”

            “Cealum, you don’t need to hug me.”

            His head fell a little and he pouted slightly. “…Okay.”

            I smiled sheepishly and he backed off. “I’ll go start on that right now, then. Can you lead me to the roof?”

            His brows knitted. “The roof?”

            I grinned. “Trust me. It’ll be easier for me that way.”

            “If you say so.” He shrugged. “Alright, everyone, I guess that was all I really had to say. You can go back to whatever you were doing before I called you here now. Just make those lists first!”

            I hushed my voice a little as Cealum came closer to me. “Cealum, just so you know… Even if I cloak us, they’ll still find us eventually; it might take a while longer, but I can’t make the place ethereal—if someone walks into something, it’ll dispel the whole illusion.”

            He nodded and shrugged. “The Realm is huge. They know the general direction, but our hold isn’t that big to begin with. When they don’t see it, they’ll just keep going. If they happen to stumble upon us, we’ll at least have the advantage of surprise.”

            “Fair enough, I suppose.” I slipped my hands into my pockets and followed him out of the room. “Hey, couldn’t you just teleport me up…?”

            He sighed. “Lazy…”

            “What? I’m fat! I don’t want to climb thirty damn flights of stairs, man!”

            He laughed. “Fine, fine, here.” He held out his hand and I took it.

            I felt the world shift and then everything was significantly brighter and all I could see in all directions for miles was grass. Well, I could see stone downward and blue sky upward, but you know what I mean. We were on the roof now.

            I circled the roof, allowing mist to pour over the sides of the walls and spread around the hold and down to its grounds while Cealum looked on with curiosity.

            “What are you doing, Tanis…?”

            “I’m… casting.”

            “Casting?

            “The way my illusions work… There’s this mist that comes out of my hands. I can control where it goes and it takes no effort to let it flow out; in fact, if I just walk around, small streams of it usually just fall from my hands, kinda like a leaky faucet.”

            “What does it do…?”

            “Well, it’s how I make the illusions. They form from the mist. No one seems to be able to see the mist except for me.”

            Cealum snapped his goggles on and looked over the side of the wall and hummed. “I don’t see any kind of mist, but there’s definitely something there; it’s like when you look above a fire and it’s all wavy.”

            “Hm. Well, what I see is a bunch of glowing, blue strand-like things—almost like hair—but they coalesce in some way to make a kind of mist; it’s hard to explain. And while I can see the mist very clearly, it doesn’t obscure my vision at all. It’s… odd.”

            “I bet. Well, anyway,” he put his goggles back up against his head, “did you have any people you wanted to recommend for recruitment?”

            I thought for a moment. There wasn’t really anyone I knew that Silvara wouldn’t already suggest. Hm. “Oh, there is this one guy; his name’s Renard. He’d be a good addition, I believe.” I nodded solemnly and continued my walk, allowing more mist to fall. “I’ll give you his address later. He always jokes about wanting to be immortal, but it’s the kind of joke that you can tell isn’t really a joke, so I’m pretty sure he’d jump on this opportunity.”

            “Well, alright! We’ll have an army before the week is out!” He chuckled.

            I just smiled and shook my head. He didn’t say much after that, so I worked in relative silence, which was alright. It wasn’t an awkward silence; we were both just out of stuff to talk about; we would have new recruits soon, I was going to perform another great feat for the security of the hold, and everything was just looking up. It was nice.

            I suppose I never really described the hold… Think Hogwarts, but like… a tenth of the size, if that. It was very much so castle-like, with a great bridge going over a kind of valley in one area. There was a main spire, where the throne room resided, that stretched above everything else. Attached to the spire was the main building, a relatively square structure with no real significant defining qualities. It was all just basic, gray stonework. There were a few small buildings just off the main building, attached by little stone pathways with overhanging stone arches. It was simple, though idyllic. It wasn’t boring, but it wasn’t garish. It was just… nice.

            After an hour or so of slowly walking the perimeter of the hold wall, I sighed.

            “What’s wrong, Tanis?”

            I looked up to the sky and it was darkening slowly. “I could be dancing with Vara right now…”

            Cealum smiled knowingly and put a hand on my shoulder. “I forgot that today was semi-formal for you. Well, at least you know that it’ll still be waiting for you when you’re done here.”

            I chuckled. “Yeah, I know. And I’m not saying by any means that it’s more important than this; it’s just a little strange. I can’t go to the dance until I protect my castle from an army.” I laughed again, a little harder this time.

            Your _castle? I thought you just said you didn’t want the title._

_Oh, whatever. My castle, our castle, the castle, it’s all the same._

_Uh-huh. You keep tellin’ yourself that._

            Cealum chuckled at that as well. “Yeah, when you say it out loud like that, I guess it does sound a little strange.” He removed his hand from my shoulder and sat up on the edge of the wall. “How much longer, do you think?”

            I glanced over the wall and my shoulders slumped a little. “It’s no Sword-Arm Hall, but this place is still pretty damn big; I’ve got a few hours to go yet. You’re free to go back in if you’d like. I don’t want to keep you from your duties.”

            He snorted. “I don’t honestly have that much to do around here, Tanis. I’m the recruiter. I have to wait for everyone to write me up those lists of addresses before I can even try to go back to work and I’m gonna need to wait until morning before I go back down to Earth or else my sleep schedule will be in total disarray.”

            I laughed. “I hear ya. Well, if you’re gonna stay up here anyways, I wanted to ask you something.”

            “What’s that…?”

            “…Well, I was just wondering… I mean, I know I’m by no means an idiot, and I probably have relatively better perceptions than most and what have you… but…”

            “But what?” He tilted his head.

            “But why me? Why would you want _me_ to be the King?”

            He righted his head and grinned. “Tanis, you only ever told me one trait that you asked for from your badge. You told me that you wanted to be able to make others see what you want them to. That’s only one thing. I know you asked for a second trait; you wouldn’t pass up an opportunity like that. It was because of the second thing that you chose—the thing you didn’t want to tell anybody about—that made me want to make you King. I saw what you asked for,” he tapped his goggles, “and I had expected no less; just watching you on Earth when we were debating whether to recruit you or not was enough for me to see that you would choose something beneficial to us in such a way. A rallying influence is exactly the kind of thing our little hold needs to stay afloat during this war.”

            I tilted my head. “Why didn’t you say anything before then?”

            “I didn’t want you to be overwhelmed by something like that; you were already pretty nervous about being thrown head-first into a war; telling you that you were to be King would not have ended well, I don’t believe. Unfortunately, I had to tell the other recruits _something_ when they saw what you did at Sword-Arm Hall and I figured that telling them you were to lead us would put a more positive form of doubt into their minds—make them think that what you did had some deeper meaning, and that you weren’t just bat-shit crazy.” He smirked.

            I snorted derisively. “Yeah, I guess that was all that could be done, given that you didn’t even know what I was up to, really.”

            He shrugged. “I had my assumptions, but basically, yeah. And don’t worry; I won’t tell anyone how your illusions work.”

            I smiled. “Thanks, Cealum.” I thought for a moment, mist still flowing freely from my hands, down the sides of the hold walls. Eventually, I looked back up. “So… Your goggles can read minds, too, then?”

            He shook his head. “Not quite. I can see a person’s current thought, but it’s more of a feeling than an actual thought that I end up seeing. It’s kind of like seeing a very specific emotion.” He put a hand on his chin. “One of the recruits can read minds, though. I think it was that Karian kid.”

            “Karian can read minds, huh? That’s a useful skill. Do you know what his second trait is?”

            “No, he never said what his second one was. I don’t know if he even has a second one. Like I said, _you_ wouldn’t pass up an opportunity like that, but some people do.”

            “Fair enough.”

            Neither of us said much of anything worth recording after that but we weren’t silent. While I continued to surround the hold in mist and he continued to walk with me, we still spoke of this and that, but nothing very important. He had a lot of opinions about all kinds of interesting aspects of science and religion and we bantered back and forth when entertainment came up—we were arguing about which consoles had better exclusive games. It was pleasant and I came to greatly respect his opinions, even though a lot of them were very different from my own. He seemed to respect mine as well, though neither of us actually conformed to the other. It was really nice to be able to simply express my opinions and have them be politely contradicted as opposed to just shut down by someone who thinks differently.

            After a couple of hours, the mist was all in place and I lowered my arms. “Finally…” I turned away from the grassland and sat my fat ass down onto the lip of the wall, resting my legs. I may not have actually been capable of being physically tired, but I was certainly mentally tired. That was a lot of time to spend walking.

            “All done…?” Cealum glanced over the side of the hold and then withdrew his gaze, realizing it was futile.

            “Yep! Just have to actually think up the illusion now…” I closed my eyes, dragged my fingers through some mist hovering just above the floor of the wall we were on, and began to think of the grasslands. The way the wind swept through the grass and the sun reflected faintly off of each long blade, the way the Sun above shone brilliantly down, lighting up the whole area, surrounded by a great blue, the way the landscape gently rolled in hills. And as I thought of it, so it became. The mist shifted and disappeared, along with everything that the hold once was. I wish I could say there was some kind of dramatic display of the image of grasslands spreading slowly over the entire hold in a beautiful way, but in reality, the illusion was finished building itself before I even had a chance to open my eyes. I made sure not to make the floor directly under Cealum and me invisible as well, lest he think he was falling from this high up. I could still see the ethereal blue glow of the entire hold, but he couldn’t.

            I opened my eyes just in time to see Cealum’s widening. “Tanis…” He walked to the edge of the visible floor. “This… This isincredible!”

            “Eh. It took forever, though. Anyway, teleport inside so I can fix the floor,” I gestured under his feet, “I’ll meet you inside.”

            He took one more look around, marveling at the lack of a hold, and then _pinged_ away.

            I cleaned up what was left of the floor, making it just as invisible as everything else, and then closed my eyes, pictured myself in the sparring room, and the entire world shifted around me. I opened my eyes and I was in the sparring room, about three centimeters from Cealum’s face. Not having expected that, I quickly jolted backwards, falling onto my ass.

            Cealum smirked and held a hand out. I took it and he lifted me to my feet. I looked around, and no one seemed to have noticed, except for Sri and Alec—of course Alec noticed; that guy never seemed to take his eyes off of me. I smiled sheepishly to Sri and then to Cealum. “I’m still not that used to teleporting yet. It’s… strange still.”

            Cealum smiled. “I know, but you’ll get used to it. On that note, get used to training, too. Alec’s been waiting for you since we went up and he looks lonely over there.” He chuckled and pushed on my back, forcing me towards the training court that Alec had designated as ours.

            “Alright, alright, geez, I’m going!” I walked over to the court and nodded to Alec as he just smiled aloofly.

            “Are you ready, Tanis?”

            “As ready as I’ll ever be, I suppose…”

            Needless to say, I got my ass handed to me front, back, and center. I tried the illusory approach that I had gone with the first time, but he quickly dissuaded me from attempting that anymore. I completely removed myself from the court at one point, but after an illusion or two got beaten into the ground and cleaved apart, he caught on and somehow figured out where I was. He ended up kicking my ass repeatedly, never using a single thing beyond his staff and swords. I knew he was capable of using more weapons, but he didn’t.

_Cocky prick…_

_Nah, you’re just a bad fighter._

_Fuck you._

            Anyway, he beat the shit out of me, repeatedly. While I was picking myself up off the court floor for the umpteenth time, Alec yawned, as though to further antagonize me.

            He must’ve seen the expression on my face, because he quickly held up a placating hand and smiled sadly. “I’m sorry, Tanis; you’re not boring me, I promise.”

_I’m sure… Dick…_

            “I’m simply exhausted. I… didn’t sleep until late last night, and I woke up early. You know how it is.” He grinned now.

            “Well, considering you were up early enough to ‘wait for me to wake up’, I’d imagine you ‘know how it is’ a lot more than I do…” I was perhaps being a little short with the guy, but I was aggravated as hell from having him kick the shit out of me for the last few hours; and it wasn’t even _that_ he was better than me; it was _how much_ better he was. Friggin’ guy, he looked like he was barely trying!

            Alec’s smile faltered a little and I swear I saw a small blush creep up his neck at the mention of this morning. “Right… Well, I’ll see you tomorrow, yes?” He tilted his head a little.

            As annoyed as I was, I couldn’t help but admit that I needed more training. “Yeah, I’ll be staying for a couple of days; if Cealum wasn’t just worrying over nothing, and I don’t believe he was, it’d be better for me to stay and train right now.”

            Alec smiled a final time, before simply nodding and _pinging_ away. Once he was gone, I walked over to the nearest wall and slumped onto the floor, attempting to nurse my bruised ego.

_Dude… You got shit-fucked._

_Don’t remind me…_

_No, seriously, you really need to work on—_

_What did I_ just _say?_

            I sighed and tossed my head back, resting it against the cold, stone wall.

 _And_ I’m _supposed to be King?_

_Kings aren’t always meant to fight, y’know._

_Yeah, but I don’t want to order other people to put their lives on the line while I sit on some throne, worrying and not being able to help._

_Well, then instead of getting—_

_I said don’t remind me._

_Alright, whatever, instead of ‘training normally’, you should ask Alec for pointers tomorrow. Ask him to help you with stances or techniques or whatever the hell fighting consists of._

_Ugh, why does the right thing always have to be the thing I want to do the least?_

_Probably because you’re a lazy prick and improvement comes with effort._

_…Shut up._

I sighed and closed my eyes, allowing myself to simply rest. It was then that I took note of something interesting—no, beautiful. I’ve said before that everyone’s _ping_ has a different tone, and listening to Alec’s while we trained, Cealum’s while he teleported around earlier that day, and so forth, confirmed that it was true. Everyone’s _ping_ had a different tone. And sitting there, with my eyes closed, sound the only useful sense left for observing the things around me, I noticed the _pings_ of everyone that was training. While I was busy focusing on Alec, I had tuned the others out, forcing them to seem as simple background noise. But now, with nothing else to focus on, I heard them all. They mixed together in a myriad of sound, the _pings_ all sounding out in the rhythm of battle, like a dozen separate songs mixing together in some kind of up-beat and never-ending orchestra of conjoined music. It was the symphony of battle, and it sounded incredible. It was soothing, yet exciting at the same time. The sounds themselves were light and brought with them a kind of peace, whereas the actions they told of brought forth feelings of tension and drama. It was as though an entire war was playing out before me in the form of a lullaby. It was… serene. I just sat there, in that state, listening to all the _pings_ for what must have been a good twenty minutes, before a new, yet familiar sound rang out from beside me.

“Whatcha doin’, Tanis?” I opened my eyes, the bliss from before lost, and glanced over to lock eyes with a curious-looking Sri.

I laughed. “Hey, Sri. Not much, I’m just relaxing.”

“You looked like you were thinkin’ pretty hard about somethin’!” She sat down beside me, crossing her legs, her crystal ball resting in her lap, the milky white mist on the inside of it contrasting interestingly against the black of her dress.

“Nah, I was just listening to everyone training. It’s complicated…” I scratched my head sheepishly. “Why aren’t you training?”

“Gee, Tanis, I wonder!” She crossed her arms and looked at me as though I had said something so unintelligent that I had dropped the IQ of the entire room.

I knitted my eyebrows and looked around at the rest of the pairs of people, still training, still creating that profound music. And then I realized I was looking at _pairs_ of people training.

“Oh, shit, duh, sorry…” I scratched the back of my head and grinned sheepishly.

Sri’s arms uncrossed and she slugged me daintily in the shoulder. “I’m just messin’ with ya~!” She giggled lightly. “You’re so _serious_ all the time, Tanis.” She turned her body to face away from me and then lied back, resting her head on my lap, crossing one leg over the other. “You need to learn to loosen up, man!” She reached up with a hand and poked me on the nose.

I looked down to the small girl, dumbfounded.

_Is she… coming onto me?_

_Wow, not everything is about you, you fucking creep. Maybe she just wanted to lie down and she isn’t as socially awkward as you are?_

_Okay, first of all, fuck you. Second of all, fuck you. And thirdly, I guess that could be true… but fuck you._

Sri grinned at the look on my face and shook her head slightly, giggling. “See? This is exactly what I mean! My head is on your leg, and you’re treating it as though I were blowing you!”

I sputtered and coughed a little. “S-Sri…!” My dumbfounded look turned to complete shock, with a hint of blush. It was one thing to have the girl lie on my lap casually, and I _know_ she’s twenty-three, but she looks and acts just like a little kid! She shouldn’t be talking about blowjobs! “You shouldn’t be saying stuff like that!”

Sri just rolled her eyes before closing them and shaking her head. “Tanis, you know I’m older than you, right…? You shouldn’t be treating me like a little kid…”

_Can she read minds…?_

“And no, I can’t read minds.”

My eyes widened and she sighed.

_Purple hippopotamus._

She just kind of looked at me strangely. “Tanis, I can’t read minds. Whatever strange thing you just thought of to try and trip me up, I don’t know what it is… I promise.”

_I’m not sure whether I should be disappointed or glad…_

_Well, if she doesn’t already think you’re as stupid as I know you are from being in your mind, then I guess you should be glad that she doesn’t have to ruin her interpretation._

I sighed again, this time at myself. And then I realized I sighed out loud again and Sri was waiting for me to elaborate. “Sorry, Sri, I’m just… not used to…” I gestured at the general area of her head and my legs, “this kind of stuff.” I managed to look her in the eyes now, at least, the awkwardness gone and being replaced with the embarrassment from having had such a juvenile reaction to begin with. “Despite most of my friends being girls, I’m still not the most lucid around them. And I’m _really_ not used to physical contact with people. Even just small gestures, like patting someone on the shoulder, have always seemed mildly taboo to me.” I shrugged. “I don’t really know why.”

She looked up at me and smiled sweetly. “That’s okay! I hope I’m not making you too uncomfortable…” She tilted her head slightly.

I smiled and shook my head. “Not at all! I mean, at first a little, but I was more confused than anything…” I chuckled.

Sri gave me a military-like nod, though the grin plastered on her face kind of melted the seriousness away from the situation. “Good! Can’t have our King bein’ all jumpy just ‘cause a cute girl decides to be nice to him!” She gave me a not-so-subtle wink and my smile turned sheepish again.

“I wasn’t being… jumpy.” I looked away indignantly and refused to meet her eyes, crossing my arms.

She giggled. “You also didn’t deny me being cute!” She quickly hopped up off the floor, standing, and bent over a little to wrap her arms around, mainly, my head. She was short enough that she still didn’t have to bend over much. It was kind of adorable. She let go of my head and skipped out of the room, grinning, apparently having said all she wanted to.

_Freakin’ women, man. I can’t even._

_I noticed._

_Shut your face._

_I can’t. That’s your department._

_…shut up._

I raked a hand through my hair, shaking my head slowly at my own insolence.

After that ordeal, I looked around the room and saw everyone else still going strong in training. With no partner for me to train with, all I could really do was watch. And so I did.

Silvara and Ravenna were training together again. I learned quickly that Ravenna’s summoning had something to do with explosions. She was blowing stuff up left and right, and it seemed that whatever she blew apart, she could then use to create new stuff almost instantly. Her strategy against Silvara’s arrows seemed to be _blow up the ground to create dust so it was harder to see and then use the rubble to immediately make walls so that stray shots couldn’t find their marks regardless_ and it was working. It was interesting to watch. Ravenna had also been aiming as much as possible for Silvara’s feet, trying to trip her up, but her reflexes were simply too good and she danced past and around all the explosions with ease. Neither of them managed to hit the other once in the time I had been watching.

I looked to another pair of people whom I didn’t know the names of. One was a boy, with inch-long, green-dyed, spiky hair, a simple black tee, and a simple pair of dark-blue jeans. His shoes were black, with green laces, and, though it was a little difficult to tell from where I was, I could see some kinds of earrings on him as well. He basically had Sylar’s build, but he was my height. He was probably around our age, maybe a couple years older. His partner was a red-headed girl. Her hair reached down just past her shoulders and was a bright, fiery orange, and she was wearing a roan dress that parted at the front for easier maneuvering, with black, knee-length tights visible underneath. She had an open, light-gray hoodie over top of the dress, and she was wearing knee-high boots that were just slightly redder than her dress. She also had a pair of old-fashioned pilot’s goggles atop her head, not too dissimilar to Cealum’s. It was an interesting get-up, all things told. She looked like she was probably in her mid-to-late-twenties.

The guy seemed to be fazing in and out of existence, disappearing and reappearing all over the place. It wasn’t teleportation, though; it was something else entirely. It was like he was melting into the atmosphere and then simply coming back as he saw fit. He was also pushing the girl around a lot somehow; he wasn’t touching her, she was just kind of getting thrown around a bunch.

_Wind?_

_Maybe. That, or it’s some kind of telekinetic thing._

_Yeah, but then, what, he’s turning himself into telekinetic energy? I feel like he’d be going a lot faster. And probably blowing a lot of shit up. Converting mass straight to energy is scary. Y’know, like, atomic bombs scary._

_True… Yeah, it’s probably wind._

The girl’s summoning, on the other hand, was significantly more obvious. When I said that her hair was a fiery orange, I wasn’t exactly being metaphorical. Her hair was literally made of fire. And she was shooting fire from her hands. She was shooting fire from just about every extremity. She was breathing fire, kicking fire, punching and throwing fire… there was just a lot of fire, okay?

The guy looked like he was having the time of his life but the girl seemed pretty miffed. She was getting thrown around a lot by wind-guy and she couldn’t land a single hit on him, y’know, ‘cause he was made of air. I thought for a while about how the fire wasn’t just eating him up when he was air, but learned later that the guy could use any air in the room, so the air that got burned up was just replaced by other air. It was neat to watch, all things told.

After getting bored of watching the girl get haphazardly tossed around like a flamethrower on a rollercoaster, I looked to another pair of trainees. I noticed one of the people I was now looking at was Karian. I also quickly noticed that he and his partner were just standing there. Neither of them was moving, their eyes were locked, and they both seemed to be incredibly tense. Karian was smirking lightly, though, while the other boy just looked focused. I suppose I should describe the other guy. He looked like he was probably in his late twenties, he had spiky, black hair, and he wore a dark, blue robe over a black t-shirt and black jeans. He had some strange, blue tattoos outlining certain areas of his face and his eyes were a dark blue as well. He was very dark and blue.

Since neither of them were really doing anything, I quickly lost interest. Before I had a chance to look at any of the other groups, something zipped past my head and stuck into the wall. I almost had a fucking heart attack. After sitting back up—I kind of dove to the side when it happened—I looked to the wall and saw a rod of light sticking out of the wall, slowly dissipating. I looked up and saw Silvara grinning and pushing some hair out of her face, shadowy bow in hand, while Ravenna clutched her sides, trying not to join me on the floor.

I gave Silvara a deadpan stare and frowned, feeling my heartbeat finally start to recede to normal speeds. “That was _not_ funny…!” I just kind of sat there pouting.

She rolled her eyes and giggled, walking over to me and holding out a hand. I sighed and reluctantly took it, pulling myself to my feet. After a few lingering moments, I let go of her hand and turned to Ravenna, who was still bent over and clutching her sides, laughing so hard she wasn’t making a sound.

“Ravenna…? You okay?”

At the sound of my voice, she started making sound again, and was trying to speak. “You…!” She cut herself off with more laughter. “You should have seen… your friggin’ face!” At this point, she went back to laughing and actually managed to fall over onto her knees, one hand holding her off the ground, the other holding her stomach. “Oh my… Oh my God, it hurts…!” She continued to laugh a while.

I looked to Silvara, who had started giggling at the state of her friend. “Is… she gonna be okay?”

Silvara rolled her eyes, smiling. “Yeah, she’ll be fine, I’m sure.”

Ravenna made some unintelligible noises that, I think, were supposed to be words through her laughter. I just shook my head, starting to grin now. “I’m glad you find my despair so amusing.”

None of us said anything for a few moments while Ravenna calmed down. After about half a minute, she finally had reduced her laughing to the occasional quick giggle and she stood back up, grinning mischievously at me. “It was…” she giggled again, “It was my idea.” After she said that, she just kind of stood there proudly.

“Uh…huh.” I sighed. “Well, anyways, since you guys are done training, I—”

I heard a _ping_ from directly behind me and, before I could even react to it, I felt a pressure on the top of my head and heard a voice sound out from said pressure. “‘Sup, guy and gals?”

I flipped the fuck out and spun around, leaping backwards to get away from… Lantigua. Of course it was Lantigua.

This display caused Ravenna to immediately start laughing like crazy again and she was doubled over in no time. I sighed before giving Lantigua a flat look. “Y’know… we _just_ fixed her. And you managed to break her again.”

Lantigua chuckled. “I know; I saw what happened. You need to loosen up, Tanny~.”

“And you need to not sneak up on people like that!” I crossed my arms, and huffed indignantly, looking to Silvara. “And you need to not shoot arrows at unsuspecting allies!”

They both rolled their eyes, in fucking _unison_ before Silvara spoke up. “Fine, fine… I’m sorry, Tanis. It won’t happen again.” She smiled.

“It’s fine.” I shrugged and matched her smile.

Then Ravenna spoke up—well, kind of, through her laughter. “I’m not!” That was all she said before she continued laughing.

Then Lantigua rolled her eyes—I swear, between her and Silvara, I was starting to get dizzy—and spoke up. “Speaking of not being sorry, you seemed pretty content with little miss magic ball over here…” She gave me a shark’s grin as she said it, and I knew what she was trying to do. I saw her quickly glance at Silvara, waiting for a reaction, and then looking back to me, waiting for me to blush or something equally embarrassing.

I surprised both of them when my only answer was “Yeah, we were talking about her giving me a blowjob.”

I don’t know if it was just the words alone or the blasé way that I said them, but I heard Ravenna choke as she started laughing _even harder_ , which, at that point, I didn’t think was even possible, and then I saw Silvara’s face go bright red as her mouth seemed to fail her and once Lantigua looked to her, she started laughing just about as hard as Ravenna.

I just stood there with a shit-eating grin while Silvara tried to figure out what the hell just happened and Ravenna tried to get some amount of control back over her lungs. Lantigua had just started laughing, so I don’t think she was in pain yet but she was definitely getting there. Ravenna must have glanced up to Silvara at some point, because there was another quick outburst of laughter as she fell right over, tapping the ground with a fist. We were getting a few looks now from some of the people who were still training but I didn’t really care; it was funny how easy it was to incapacitate three people with ten simple words.

After a few moments of that going on, Silvara finally managed to regain some of her composure. “You… You didn’t actually…” The look she was giving me was an interesting mix between nervous curiosity and apprehensive doubt.

It was finally my turn to roll some eyes. “Well, the word blowjob was used,” I chuckled as her eyes widened a little, “but no, we were talking about confidence and stuff. It was just a joke.” I nodded.

I just barely heard her mutter “Thank God” as Lantigua finally composed herself. “Geez, I need to hang out with you guys more often. Alas, duty calls. I’ll talk to you guys later.” She smiled, waved, and _pinged_ away before any of us could even say bye.

Ravenna had long since gotten off of the floor and was trying to hold back small giggles again when Silvara brought herself out of her reveries. "Well, anyway, Raven and I are gonna go exploring through the hold." She gave me a light smile. "You're free to come with us if you'd like!"

"I'd--" I heard a _ping_ and recognized it as Cealum's.I don't know what made me hesitate but there was just this _feeling_ , this nagging kind of sensation, telling me that I should see what Cealum was up to. "--love to... I really would, but I'm exhausted." I scratched the back of my head sheepishly, hoping they'd buy it.

Silvara gave me a curious look at first but seemed to not think too long on it and shrugged. "Well, alrighty. Some other time, then!" She smiled again, and pulled on Ravenna's arm. "Come on, Raven, let's go on an adventure!" She pumped a fist into the air and practically skipped out of the room, Ravenna in tow and snickering.

When I turned to see what Cealum was up to, I noticed he was ushering Sylar to a corner and then he spoke up loud enough for the whole room to hear, his voice carrying over that of the sounds of training. "Hey, everyone!" Everyone in the room slowed what they were doing to a stop and gave him their full attention. It took no more than a few seconds. "I'm so glad you're all taking this so seriously, but I think you should get some rest now. It's getting late and, as much as training is important, so is staying healthy. Sure, you don't need to eat or anything here, but you still need to sleep and I don't want you to forget that." Some of the people around him seemed like they wanted to stay anyways, but there was a sense of urgency in his voice that made it clear that what he was saying was less of a suggestion and more of a command.

And so it was that the room cleared itself relatively quickly. I noticed the redhead and the guy with the blue robes teleport out together, holding hands. I saw Karian shrug and teleport out as well. The green-haired kid didn't teleport so much as he just kind of... evaporated. Everyone else left the old-fashioned way. I walked right up to Cealum to see what he’d do.

He looked at me and simply said, “You, too, Tanis. You look beat.”

_Totally not suspicious._

I held up a placating hand and smiled. “Don’t worry, I’m goin’. I just never got to tell you Renard’s address.” I told him and he nodded, thanking me, before shooing me away again.

I followed the small remaining crowd out of the room and when they were all out of sight, I cloaked myself and silenced my steps and plodded back into the room. Cealum was leaning up against the wall in the corner he ushered Sylar to, while Sylar just sat cross-legged on the ground. Both of them were silent. I assumed they were waiting to make sure absolutely no one was in earshot.

 _Well, now I_ definitely _have to hear this._

_For once, I agree with you. Wanting privacy is one thing. Keeping secrets from the would-be King is something else entirely. And Cealum doesn't seem ready to share with anyone but Sylar._

I walked up close enough to them that I wouldn't have to strain myself to hear if they started whispering, but not so close to them that they would have any way of realizing I was there unless Cealum scanned the room thoroughly enough with his goggles.

After a few more moments of silence, Cealum sighed and hung his head. "Sylar... I have a bad feeling."

Sylar raked a hand through his hair and let out a long breath. "You noticed, too, eh?"

Cealum's eyebrows rose. "Sy... You never fail to surprise me. So, you know what this is about then?"

"Yeah. One of the recruits isn't one of _our_ recruits. I have an idea of who it is but I haven't had a chance to look into it yet."

"Well, I'm glad you haven't yet. I don't want any of the recruits feeling like they're being investigated."

"Sky, you know I'm more professional than that..." Sylar's eyes narrowed a little. Not in anger as much as in annoyance, I figured.

"I know, I know. I just... Look, let me deal with this, okay? I just wanted to make sure you knew to watch your back is all. But I've got this under control, alright?" Halfway through that statement, Cealum had put a hand on Sylar's shoulder.

Sylar didn't look overly pleased about Cealum's request but he put his own hand over Cealum's and nodded solemnly. "You got it, Sky."

_Christ, just kiss already._

_Shut up, me._

Cealum removed his hand from Sylar's shoulder and nodded. "Don't tell the others about this, please. Kai would overreact and Lantigua would go snooping. And, obviously, don't tell any of the recruits. We don't need any internal strife. Just keep an eye out for anything and tell me if you find something. Watch your back. Watch the others' as well, of course."

"Don't worry, man. You know how I am. I'm not going to let anything happen if I can help it." Sylar grinned confidently and Cealum gave him a weak smile back before _pinging_ out. "Geez, no kiss goodbye?" he said to no one in particular.

 _I fucking_ called _that shit._

I grinned before uncloaking and dropping my veil of silence. "It seemed like you only needed to ask." I said with a grin. That grin immediately disappeared when I realized Sylar was no longer in front of me and there was cold steel against my throat. It was only once I felt the blade settle against my neck that I even heard the _ping_.

_In hindsight, I guess that made me seem pretty suspicious._

_Ya think?_

"Tanis, I am going to ask you this once and you are going to respond truthfully or your head will be on the floor before you feel it come off. Why are you here?"

"Sylar, relax, I have no quarrel with--" The blade pressed further against my throat, threatening to break some very valuable skin. "Okay, okay! Look, I was just curious, okay? I noticed Cealum teleport in before he ushered everyone else out and I was curious what kinds of secrets were being kept from the rest of us. It was wrong, and I'm sorry, but I assure you, I'm no traitor. The reason I uncloaked was so I could talk to you about this whole thing. Otherwise, I would have just teleported or walked back out myself."

 _Ping_. And the blade was gone. "Sorry, Tanis. I know you aren't the traitor, but I had to make sure. You understand."

I nodded stiffly, one of my hands finding its way to my still-attached neck and rubbing it. "Of course." I relaxed and let out a breath I didn't realize I was holding. "Now, about this whole not-our-recruit business... We talking about a spy here or something else?"

Sylar nodded. "Astute as always, Tanis. Yeah, Cealum and I both believe we've got a spy in our midst. I have one suspect. The way Cealum was talking, I don't think he suspected the same person as me, but I could be wrong. Any thoughts? You don't seem all that surprised..." His eyes narrowed slightly.

I shrugged. "I'm not that surprised, really, but I don't have any real suspects. That Alec guy weirds me out, but I doubt he's a spy. I suppose I can check up on him, though. You?"

"One of the recruits, Enlil. I don't know that you've met her yet."

"Can't say that I have, no."

"Well, if you run into her, just... y'know. Don't let your guard down. I'll check her out when I get a chance, but Cealum was adamant that he do this on his own, so I'm not going out of my way to do so."

"Fair enough."

“Anyways, Cealum wasn’t really lying when he said you should all get some rest. You’ve been training just as hard as the rest of them from what I’ve heard.”

I scowled slightly. “More like I’ve been getting my shit stomped _harder_ than the rest of them.” I grinned and chuckled despite myself and Sylar’s lips curled up a little.

“Don’t worry, Tanis. We know you’re no soldier. That you’re trying at all is good enough for us. Just keep at it.”

“I know, I know… Anyway, I won’t keep you any longer. I’ll see you later, Sylar.”

He nodded once. “See ya, Tanis.” And then he _pinged_ away.

_Well, this sucks; my dance just got turned into a spy hunt._

_Hey, you wanted a more interesting life. Here it is._

_…I hate it when you’re right._


	6. Rooting Out Spies and Alec's Allegiances

            After my little meeting with Sylar that night, I went right to bed. When I woke up, I was thankfully alone that time. I stood from my bed, huddled off to the side of the throne room and, since I was already dressed, headed out the double-doors. I made my way at a sedate pace to the sparring room, hearing the _pings_ and other combat-related sounds echo through the halls, getting louder the closer I got. When I walked through the doors, I was greeted with the unbridled sights and sounds of training. I noticed there were already some new faces. There were three or five more people than before. I say three or five, because I noticed that Sri still didn’t have a partner, which meant there were still an odd number of people. I noticed one of the people there was Renard and I made a mental note to go say hello to him later. I didn’t recognize any of the other newbies, though. When I looked to my designated area, I saw Alec, staff in hand, practicing some kinds of stances. I stood for a moment, slightly mesmerized; it was like watching a river dancer. His movements were fluid, but fast. He never stopped to change position or the direction of a swing; he simply flowed from one stance to the next, one movement transitioning into another seamlessly. It reminded me of the night in the forest with Silvara, watching her dance across the logs and rocks, firing arrow after arrow into my targets with ease.

            After about half a minute of watching him, he noticed me and immediately halted himself, standing up straight, with the butt of his staff against the floor. I walked over and he spoke up. “I… didn’t realize you were already here. We could have started training already.”

            I grinned. “Yes, we could have, but I was trying to see if I could learn from your movements.” My grin fell a little. “Unfortunately, I couldn’t.” I conjured up my staff and looked it over before looking back to him again. “I was actually hoping that today, instead of sparring, you could show me some basic stances or techniques; I really don’t know much at all about how to fight.”

            He nodded and smiled lightly. “I could tell from our sessions.” His eyes grew slightly wider. “N-No offense to you, of course!”

            I rolled my eyes and grinned. “None taken, Alec. You’re the best fighter we’ve got here and I’m the worst. That’s why we’re paired together. I need to be able to fight and you’re the one who can teach me the fastest. Or, at least, you can teach me more properly than anyone else here.”

            His stature returned to normal and he nodded. “Of course, Tanis… So, you wish to learn the basics?”

            “I do.”

            Let me tell you, that training session was boring as fuck. I recognized its importance, and I learned a lot, but it was just dreadfully boring. It was also very… hands-on. Alec would tell me to stand a certain way, and when I didn’t get it exactly, he would walk over and reposition me. Now, normally, I would have expected that and it would have been fine. However, it was almost as though he was afraid to touch me. He would be so gentle and precise, get my arms or legs or whatever into the right position, and then rip himself away as quickly as possible, before hurrying back a certain distance away from me. It was… unnerving.

            At some point, Alec had decided we were done for the day. “Well, Tanis, I think that should be enough for now. You don’t want to learn too much too quickly or you’ll forget the small details. And it’s those small details that make the difference between you or your enemy walking away from a fight. So, you may continue practicing the stances and such if you wish, but I’m going to go rest a while. I assume I shall see you tomorrow?”

            “Yeah, I’ll be here. I need to be ready, after all, in case something happens.”

            _Namely, in case that spy decides to drive some through my chest._

_Speaking of spies, you should follow him. He said he’s going to rest but you know he’s not that tired. Look at him. Yesterday, he said he was tired, and he looked it. Today, he says he’ll be ‘resting’, whatever that means._

_True. Well, I think I’ve got these stances down anyways. I’ve always had a thing for details._

_Yes, yes, you’re smart or whatever. Make sure you’re smart enough to be discreet._

            “Well, I shall see you then.” Alec nodded once and then walked out the door of the sparring room.

            As he was walking out the door, I began covering myself in mist. When he was out of sight, I silenced my steps and followed him. I looked out the door and saw him taking a right down a hallway in the opposite direction of the throne room. I stepped outside the room, cloaked myself, and ran after him. I turned the corner he had turned and saw him make another turn, a left this time, down another nondescript hallway. I followed him like that for a while before I lost sight of him as I took too long to get to one crossing.

            _Son of a bitch!_

_Wait… Do you hear that?_

I stopped my breathing, which wasn’t really a necessary thing to do in The Realm anyways, and listened hard. There was a dull and muffled… something coming from one of the doors down the corridor to my right. I edged myself towards the door and pressed my ear against it.

            _Music…?_

_…Familiar music._

_Is that…?_

_…There’s no way._

I threw some mist at the door and made it seem like it was still in position as I slowly pulled it open and peeked inside. I stood there, for a moment, dumbfounded, and pulled away from the door. I looked left and right, down the halls, making sure no one else was there, and then I peeked in again.

            _It is._

In that room, surrounded by filled bookshelves, lying on his back on a table, one leg crosses over the other, his combat boot-clad foot bouncing, and holding a book above himself to read, was Alec, shirtless, and singing rather wholeheartedly along to Adam Lambert’s _For Your Entertainment_.

            _Well… I don’t really know what I was expecting… but I can’t say that this was it._

_At least he’s still got his pants on._

I shook my head. _Yeah, that would have been significantly more awkward._

_You’d have liked it._

_You’re incorrigible, you know that?_

_You’re not denying it._

_I didn’t figure it needed denying. Take that as you will._

As I finished that little back-and-forth, the song came to an end, and Alec hopped off the table, walking over to source of the music, a small radio with an iPod sticking out of the top of it that was sitting on a little, round table in front of one of the bookshelves, and he started flipping through other songs.

            Before he found one he wanted to listen to, I dropped all of my illusions and walked in while he had his back turned and I began clapping slowly.

            _Ping_. He spun around, staff in hand, and eyed me as I held my hands up placatingly.

            _I have got to stop randomly appearing in front of potentially hostile people._

            “Alec, relax, I was just impressed is all.”

            Apparently, his brain finally caught up to his body and he realized who I was because he stood at ease and let out a breath. “Impressed…?”

            I grinned. “You’ve got a bit of a talent, singing.”

            His eyes widened a little and he glanced down to his still-bare chest before teleporting to the table he had been lying on and grabbing his black shirt that he had simply tossed to the floor, pulling it over his head. “W-What are you doing here, Tanis…?” He was pulling his cloak on at that point, a small blush gracing his face.

            _I can’t really say I was just stalking him around, can I? And I was cloaked when I came in, so I can’t say I just stumbled upon this room…_

_Just tell him the truth. You said it yourself; he’s strange, but he’s not the spy._

_I suppose that’ll have to do._

I sighed and closed the door before walking over to and sitting in one of the chairs that surrounded the table he had been on. “I followed you here.”

            His blush disappeared as the clasp on his cloak clicked shut. “You… followed me…? Why?” I noticed his grip tighten around his staff slightly.

            I grinned. “Don’t worry; I’m not going to attack you or something.” His grip loosened slightly, but not completely. “I followed you because I wanted to know what you were up to in your spare time.”

            The blush returned to his face and he tilted his head slightly. “You… were stalking me…?”

            I chuckled at that. “No, no… Well, sort of. I thought you were acting suspicious and I have reason to believe that one of the new recruits is a spy. I wanted to make sure you weren’t that spy.”

            He visibly relaxed and the blush faded away again. “I see… So, we’ve got a spy in our hold?”

            I held up a finger. “I have reason to believe so. That doesn’t mean there is one.” I dropped my hand. “But I know you’re not the spy. I can tell by the way you reacted when I said it. You didn’t flinch or look away or anything. Your brows knitted. You were interested, not concerned. You relaxed instead of putting up your guard.” I shrugged. “Sorry for intruding on your…” I glanced around, “…this.”

            He smiled sheepishly. “It’s alright. I mean, this isn’t a personal study or anything. I knew someone was bound to walk in on me eventually.” He scratched the back of his head and looked down a little before muttering “I just didn’t think it would be you.”

            I pretended not to hear that last part for both of our sakes before standing up and walking to a random bookshelf. “Now… Normally, I would just leave you to your peace with this out of the way and I would continue on with my day. However, me continuing on with my day comprised of me trying to find some kind of library.” I looked back to Alec and chuckled. “You see wherein my dilemma lies.”

            He was sitting on the table now, swinging his feet idly off the side of it, facing me. “Well, I’m certainly not telling the King to find somewhere else to read books.” He gave me a shit-eating grin I usually only ever saw in the mirror when he said that.

            _Even out of combat, he’s trying to bait me into things._

_You’ll be good friends, then, I’d say._

_Probably._

“You better not, or I’ll have your head!” I smiled and went back to looking over the titles on the shelf.

            I saw him grin back at me before I turned away. “Anything in particular you’re looking for?”

            “History, mostly. Anything about The Realm, the badges, and so on. I want to learn as much as I can about this place and the people we’re going to be fighting against before I go head-first into a war.”

            “History’s on the shelf to the left of the door. When you came in, I was actually working my way through _The Three Holds: The Political Sciences of The Realm_. It seems our interests coincide.”

            I turned to him and grinned. “It seems they are. Hey… how about we make a little compromise?”

            He tilted his head slightly. “What did you have in mind?”

            “We can both pick some shelves—different ones—and read through everything on them. Then, we can just verbally explain the contents of the books we finish to each other. That way, we’ll make it through this entire library in half the time.”

            Alec nodded, seemingly pleased with my idea. “I’ve already read three of the books from the third shelf, so choose any of the shelves but that one, I suppose.” After he said that, he lied back down on the table and reopened his book.

            I looked at a few of the titles of the different books until I came across a few titles that were just names and roman numerals.

            _Oliver Stanton III, Jeremy Kither IV, Edmund Salamence V, they’re in order. Previous Kings…?_

_Seems that way. I guess the numerals are the order in which they ruled. Salamence was the most recent King, it seems._

_Yeah… but who wrote these books?_

I turned to where Alec was on the table, reading quietly. “Hey, Alec, do you know who wrote these?” I held up _Edmund Salamence V_.

            Alec shook his head. “No one wrote them.” At my look, he grinned and continued. “It’s another strange trait of The Realm that I read about in one of those other books. Every King that dies, their body transform into a book—an autobiography of sorts, written in their perspective, which details their life in The Realm. For history buffs like us, it’s a convenient oddity.”

            I looked down at the book in my hand. “Convenient, indeed… it’s just the Kings, though? No other wielders?”

            Alec shrugged. “I’m stipulating more than anything. That it happens is for certain, but it’s only been mentioned in passing. I guess it would make more sense if it was all wielders, huh…? After all, there’s nothing special about a King, really, besides their title, right?”

            “Yeah…” I looked back at the shelf and then back to Alec. “So, other than this shelf, did you see any other books like these—just names and/or numbers for titles?”

            He shook his head. “I wasn’t looking for them, though, so there might be some. Also, this is a relatively small collection of books. It’s likely this was actually just a personal study, considering the one table and chair. There could be an actual library or archive of some sort somewhere else in these walls. Maybe the books of the other wielders are there?”

            I nodded. “I’ll ask one of the Four later. For now, reading up on Kings should be good enough.” He went back to his book and I opened mine. The beginning of the book was relatively interesting. This Edmund guy was incredibly smart. It was refreshing to see such intelligence and, since it was from his point of view, I got all of his personal thoughts as well. Unfortunately, he was the boring kind of intelligent, so it was definitely more of a scholar’s book than anything. I got to right around where he was about to meet the previous King and called it quits for the time being, taking quick note of the page number. I rubbed my eyes and looked around aimlessly, my gaze eventually settling on the ever-silent Alec, just reading. The only sound he made was when he flipped a page or blew some of his hair out of his face. I could still only see his one eye, though.

            _I wonder what he’d do if you kissed him._

_I wonder how much more sane I’d be if you stopped talking forever._

_Oh, come on! It’d be hilarious._

_Yeah, for you maybe!_

_I_ am _you. How many times do we have to go through this?_

_Whatever. Either way, I’m not kissing him. I suppose I should try and get to know him a little better first…_

_Yeah, ask him where he’s from or something, maybe teleport over there sometime when he’s on Earth, get him to let you meet his parents,_ then _kiss him._

_I… I honestly don’t even have enough words in my vocabulary to properly insult you for being as much of a dipshit as you are._

_Leaving you speechless, am I? Yeah, I tend to have that effect on people…_

I sighed and shook my head slowly. When I did, Alec looked over from his book. “Something the matter, Tanis?”

            _I seriously need to stop sighing out loud._

_Eeyup._

“No, just tired of reading for now.”

            “Ah, I see… Did you… find out anything interesting yet?”

            I looked down to my book and shook my head. “Nah. Not yet. I haven’t really gotten that far, though. I’m not the fastest reader.” I set the book down and leaned back in my chair. “…Did you find anything interesting in yours?”

            He looked at his own book for a second, then back up to me. “…Not really.”

            I lightly drummed my fingers against my thighs for a moment, trying to think of something else to say. I could feel the awkward tension exponentially rising with every second that passed. I looked down at the floor, just kind of staring for a second. Alec had closed his book now and was just kind of looking my general way. After about half a minute, I just shook my head and laughed. I looked up to Alec and saw him grinning back at me, holding back a chuckle. “Well, I’m done sitting here awkwardly,” I smiled at him, “How about you?”

            He actually let his chuckle escape then and he sat up, throwing his legs over the side of the table, swinging them idly. “Yeah, I’m okay with making things less awkward.” He smirked.

            I crossed my arms and leaned back in my chair again, lifting it onto just its back legs and rocking back and forth slightly. “So, where ya from?”

            He smiled. “Little town in Canada, you probably haven’t heard of it—”

            My eyes widened a little. “There’s no fucking way you _also_ live in Sandford.”

            He gave me a confused look. “What? No,” he chuckled, “I’m from a place called Last Lion.” I sagged a little, grinning sheepishly. “I’ll take it you’re from Sandford, then?” He smirked.

            I grinned and nodded. “Yeah. As are Vara—Silvara—and Ravenna. Vara came here with me and we found out Ravenna actually went to our school after she and Vara became friends. It was an interesting coincidence. I was gonna call some kind of bullshit if you said you were also from Sandford.”

            He nodded. “Understandable.”

            I knitted my eyebrows. “Y’know… You’re one of the only people here that I noticed isn’t even slightly fazed by any of the stuff going on. Why is that?”

            He smiled wide when I asked that for some reason. “Let’s just say… I’m used to things being a little less than normal.”

            He obviously didn’t want to explain what that cryptic statement meant, so I didn’t press the issue. We shot the shit for a while and got to know each other a little better. And by that, I mean, he got to know me pretty well, and every time I asked him a personal question about his life on Earth, he would give me an answer with some kind of cryptic undertone, as if he was challenging me to try and dig further. I did learn the names of some of his friends, though, and apparently he lived in a diner and worked as an English teacher, even though he looked like he was way too young to have been one. After we ran out of questions for each other, we just kinda chilled in the study for a while longer and talked about other stuff, like the hold and combat techniques and war tactics and different books and music we both enjoyed and so on. It was nice.

            After a while, I stood and Alec looked quizzical for a moment before asking “You going somewhere?”

            “Nope. _We’re_ going somewhere.” I grinned at him. “C’mon, I’m gonna introduce you to the others.”

            He stood up and grabbed his staff where it lay, propped up against the side of the table. “Sounds good to me!”

            I opened the door of the study and walked out into the hall, looked around, and then looked back to Alec. “Uh… I actually don’t know the way back. I wasn’t really paying much attention to where _I_ was going on my way here…” I scratched the back of my head sheepishly and Alec just chuckled.

            “We could just teleport back.” He smirked.

            “…Oh, yeah.”

            _I keep forgetting teleporting is a thing I can do._

_Well, when you’ve walked everywhere literally your entire life, it becomes difficult to break the habit._

“I guess I’ll meet you there, then.” He nodded and _pinged_ and I followed suit, closing my eyes and opening them to the inside of the sparring room. I got a tiny bit of vertigo from it, but was otherwise fine.

            I looked around for a moment and spotted Alec in our training court. I waved him over and he started towards me while I looked around for my other targets. I quickly found Renard, right where he was earlier, doing… something. He was just kind of… pulling stuff out of nowhere. And then it would disappear just as quickly, and appear on or around his partner. It was like a cartoony magician’s act. I sent some mist his way while I looked around for Silvara and Ravenna. I spotted Ravenna first and she was training with the green-haired kid that did the windy thing. She looked… mad. Her face was all flushed red and she was throwing around explosions like they were going out of style. Green-Hair looked like he was having a great time, though. I sent a trail of mist Ravenna’s way. I looked around the room again and finally found Silvara. She was standing up against the wall, giggling about something or another that she was talking to Sri about. That saved me looking for Sri. I sent two trails of mist their way. Alec looked on with curiosity as I stood, hand outstretched, nothing seemingly happening. When the trails of mist reached their respective targets and connected to their heads, I sent an illusion of sound, which was just the sound of me saying “When y’all have a sec, come meet me by the door. I want to introduce everyone to each other.”

            I dropped my hand and the mist dissolved into nothing as Silvara and Sri looked our way. I waved them over and they started towards me with confused looks on their faces. I saw Renard jump into a gigantic stereotypical magician’s hat and pop out of existence, confusing the shit out of his partner, some brunette girl with hot-pink streaks in her hair. I heard a loud pop behind me and I turned around as Renard clawed his way out of the same large hat. When he got all the way out, the hat shrank to normal size and he plopped it atop his head. “Hey, Tanis.” He was wearing what was probably the widest grin I’d ever seen on the kid’s face.

            “Hey, Renard. I see you’re enjoying yourself.” I chuckled.

            “Dude, you don’t even know. Goggles guy randomly showed up at my house, told me a bunch of stuff that was really confusing at first, offered me immortality, I said hell yes, and then I was here. He gave me a gold thing, I made it into a magic wand,” he pointed a long, black wand with a white tip at me, “and now I’m apparently immortal or whatever so long as I stay here. Of course I’m enjoying myself!”

            I laughed at his enthusiasm and pointed off to my left, where Alec was idly standing by. “I wanted to introduce you to Alec here. He’s my own personal combat trainer.” I winked at Alec and he smiled back warmly.

            “Something like that,” he said, holding out his hand to Renard. “It’s nice to meet you.”

            Renard smirked, and took Alec’s hand in his own. When he did, Alec’s body seized up and his hair stood on end, sparks going from his staff and shoes into the floor. “Nice to meet you, too!” Renard burst out laughing, letting go of Alec’s hand, and holding up his own, showing an incredibly dangerous joy-buzzer.

            I knelt down to Alec who, after being shocked, had fallen to the floor. “You okay?”

            He looked up at me, his hair still on end, and coughed out a bit of smoke. “Yeah, I’m… okay. I think.” I held out my hand and helped him to his feet. I finally got a look at his other eye then. There was a scar over it and it was kind of gray instead of the icy blue of his other eye. He must have caught the look on my face, because he very quickly put his hand up to his hair and flattened it all back down, covering his eye again.

            Instead of commenting on his eye, however, I turned to Renard. “Was that necessary? Or even safe?”

            Renard just rolled his eyes. “Relax~ I had it three settings down from lethal.” He grinned.

            I just blinked. “You have a potentially lethal joy-buzzer?”

            “Yep! I call it the killjoy-buzzer—working title, don’t judge me. I have all kinds of other stuff, too. I have successfully managed to weaponize practical jokes and old-school magic.”

            “That’s both awesome and horrifying.”

            “I try my best. What’s he doin’?” He pointed to Alec.

            “I’m checking myself for damage and healing whatever injuries may have come from what you just did.” Alec had his hand a few inches from his chest and was casting green mist into it.

            “Huh… cool.”

            I was about to say something else when Silvara and Sri finally managed to get over to us. “Hey, Tanis. Who was it you wanted to introduce us to?” Silvara looked between the two boys on either side of me.

            Sri grinned. “Yeah, who are your boyfriend and the magician guy?” In case I didn’t mention it already, Renard was wearing a stereotypical magician’s outfit. Black suit pants, black overcoat with a white button-up dress-shirt underneath, black top hat, and the magic wand, of course, to top it all off.

            Alec blushed and started rambling something along the lines of “I’m not his boyfriend” when Renard gasped. “You got a boyfriend?!”

            I sighed and ran a hand down my face. I pointed to my left, “His name is Alec,” then I pointed to my right, “and this is Renard. Vara, I think you’ve met him before.”

            She nodded, grinning at the instant chaos brought upon by the Lolita demon standing to her side.

            Since I thought it’d be cute and amusing, I actually magicked a little black tail with an arrow on the end and some sharp-looking black ears onto Sri. “Alec, Renard, this is Vara,” I pointed to the silver-haired girl, “and this is the devil, also known as Sri.” I pointed to the short one.

            “Hey! I’m not the devil!” Her tail swished angrily and I giggled.

            Alec looked on curiously and pointed to her tail. “Are you a succubus?”

            Sri’s eyes widened and her little ears folded back against her head. “W-What?”

            Silvara looked down at her and rolled her eyes, giggling. “Tanis, you’re such a jerk.”

            Sri caught on, then, as I started laughing in earnest, the cat out of the bag. She looked behind herself and saw the tail and she looked back up at me with a flat stare. “I’d be more upset if I didn’t think it looked so good on me.”

            I snorted. “Humble as always, Sri.”

            Silvara looked to Alec. “Have I seen you before somewh—”

            An infuriated scream and a huge explosion cut off whatever she was about to say and we all turned to the source of it to see what the hell just happened. There was smoke covering three courts and when it cleared, Ravenna was standing at the middle of it, her hand clenched around the green-haired kid’s shirt, her face less than an inch from his. There was debris everywhere. The floor around them was completely destroyed, as were parts of the two surrounding courts. Ravenna’s face was beet red and she was panting, while the guy was just grinning like a fool, his legs dangling beneath him. He reached his hand up to Ravenna’s face and booped her on the nose with a finger. She just kind of… stopped being mad. Her face started losing its flush and she let go of his shirt suddenly, and the boy fell to the floor, catching himself before he ended up on his ass. Silvara and I looked at each other, then at the two of them, and we both grinned. Ravenna looked around her, at the crater she had made in the middle of the sparring room, and she walked outside of it, waved her hands over it, and it started to reconstruct itself. All the rubble rolled and bounced to the crater, and then, with a weird crunching sound, started to mold to fit the crater. After a few seconds, it was the right shape, and it set into the floor and looked good as new, as though it had never been broken in the first place.

_Okay, that’s actually super cool._

_I’m gonna have to agree with you on that one._

            Then she looked around the room and saw everyone staring at her and she just put her hand on the back of her head. “Sorry, guys! Ignore… that.” She said, waving her hand at the floor. Then, she saw Silvara and me standing off near the door and just nonchalantly walked over to us. “Hey, guys.” The rest of the room slowly, but surely, ignored… that, and went back to training.

            I held up my hand and pointed to all the people standing around me. “Alec, Renard, Sri, you already know Vara.” I held up my other hand and pointed at the girl who just blew up half the room. “Everyone, this is Ravenna.”

            “And I’m Zephyr!” Ravenna visibly tensed as the green-haired boy fazed into existence beside her, his arm around her shoulders, leaning on one foot.

            I looked at the boy, saw the grin on his face as his eyes kept flicking down to where Ravenna was getting ready to beat the shit out of him, and I grinned. “Hello, Zephyr.”

            His legs evaporated into a kind of steam and he just hovered there like a genie, removing himself from Ravenna and crossing his arms. “So, you’re Tanis, huh?” I nodded. “You’re next in line for the throne or whatever?” There was something about the way he was talking, like he was trying to goad me into something. The last two people I had seen him sparring with, I recalled, were both incredibly mad when they were fighting him.

_Think he’s going to try and pick a fight?_

_It’s very possible._

            Preemptively, I decided to put a bit of mist up around the lot of us. “So they keep telling me, yes.” I chuckled. That seemed to get Renard’s attention but he didn’t say anything when no one else seemed surprised.

            Zephyr laughed and puffed out his chest. “I don’t really see it…” I created a clone of myself and cloaked, walking around behind the boy. “I mean, you were all mean and scary back at that sword place, but every time I see you here, you’re either gettin’ your ass whipped by that guy.” He stuck a thumb at Alec, “or you’re flirtin’ with one of these three.” He gestured to the three girls standing to his side. “So, why is it, then, that _you’re_ supposed to be the King, huh?”

            “Oh, no reason, really,” my clone said, as I appeared behind Zephyr and poked him on the back of the neck. “Except for, y’know, if this were a fight, I’d have just won.”

            Tanis II dissolved back into mist and Zephyr casually spun around in the air, grinning. “Y’know, I’ve decided that I like you. That is a rare occurrence at the best of times.”

            I snorted. “If you say so. By the way, what did you do to Ravenna back there?”

            Ravenna looked over to me, then at Zephyr, then at the floor for a second, then back to Zephyr. “…Hey, yeah, what the hell?! What _did_ you do? I was pissed! And then you poked me and I wasn’t anymore! I didn’t even care!”

            Zephyr chuckled heartily. “I just used my natural good looks and incredible charm to get her to forget she was mad, obviously.” He ran a hand through his spiky hair in a way that I guess he thought looked cool or sexy or something and winked at Ravenna, who just gave him a flat stare. He turned back to me and shrugged. “Worth a shot. No, my second ability is to calm people. I used to get in a lot of fights at bars—”

            “Hittin’ on all the taken girls?” I smirked.

            He laughed. “Yeah, more or less.” He looked to Ravenna, then back to me. “Aw, shit, you two are together, aren’t you? Damn it, every time!”

            I shook my head and rolled my eyes. Ravenna just sighed and turned to Silvara, said something, to which Silvara giggled at, and then sat against the wall, looking unimpressed at the floating genie boy. “No, we’re not together.” I said. His brows raised a little and the corners of his mouth twitched up. “Anyway, you were saying?”

            “Oh, yeah, so, I got into a lot of fights. Figured, hey, if I could get all those guys to be less angry all the time, I wouldn’t have to worry about getting on their bad sides. So, I can calm anyone that I need to, with but a single touch.” He grinned maniacally and poked me on the nose when he said that and I felt… nothing, actually. And I don’t mean that I was feeling empty and hollow or something, I mean his touch had literally no effect. He must have noticed because his smile fell and he looked accusingly at his finger, then accusingly back at me. “Are you not you again?”

            I laughed. “No, I’m me. Your power is just broken, I guess. Can that happen?” I asked, looking contemplatively at the floor, “Can powers just break?”

            He looked back at his finger, seeming to get worried, and he turned around and poked Renard, who immediately stumbled backwards and fell over, asleep. “Huh. Too much?” Zephyr said aloud, more to himself than anything, it seemed. He turned back to me, and put his hand on my forehead. Nothing happened. “Okay, what the hell? Are you just immune?!” He put his other hand on my head as well and started pressing a little bit. I wasn’t feeling a damn thing, other than his hands molesting my face. “WHY ISN’T THIS WORKING?!”

            Then a familiar voice rang out in my head.

_Please…_ It sounded kind of slurred for some reason. _Tell him to… to stop… I can’t-even… uuggghh…_ Then I just heard snoring.

_Uhh… what?_

            No answer except for more snoring noises.

            “Zephyr, can you stop touching my face, please?” I figured that was a legitimate excuse to get him to stop attempting sleep magic on me.

            He pulled his hands away with a sad sigh. “I don’t get it. Why are you immune?”

_Yo~… Me…? You okay?_

            There was a slight groaning and then _Yeah… I’m… I’m good, I guess._

_Dude, you took the effect of his magic instead of me! That’s awesome!_

_Says you… asshat… God, I feel like… like a fuckin’… I can’t even think of a simile for how fucking shitty I feel…_

_I wonder how that works, though. Why did it affect you instead of me?_

_Do I look like fuck off, please? ‘Cause it’d be awesome if you shut up for a bit. I feel like garbage…_

            “Yo, Alec, care to heal me quick?”

            He looked at me like I was an idiot. “…But you seem fine.”

            “Yeah, but I wanna test something.” I put on my best pout and batted my eyelashes. “Pretty please, Alec~?”

            He rolled his eyes and slapped me with green mist. He didn’t actually slap me, but it sounded funnier that way, so… yeah. Don’t judge me. After a moment or two, he took his hand back. “Feel any different? Did your test work, whatever it was?”

_Feelin’ any better?_

_Significantly. Thanks, or whatever._

_Do you even know how to be nice?_

_You’re talking to yourself, remember?_

_I should’ve just let you suffer…_

            “Yeah, I’m good now…” I grumbled. “Thanks, Alec.” I said that part a little more sincerely and he just kind of smiled awkwardly while everyone else looked confused as hell. Which, I mean, I couldn’t really blame them for.

            Zephyr was the most confused. “Wait, so, it did work, then?”

            I grinned. “That’s a very good question.”

            He crossed his arms, frowning. “Man, not cool. You’re OP. Why are you so OP? What the hell even is your power?”

            I blinked. “Power? What power?”

            Alec spoke up. “Is it the power of voodoo?”

            I responded. “Who do?”

            Zephyr was getting upset and yelled “YOU DO!”

            “What?” I asked.

            “Remind me of the babe,” Silvara finished, grinning.

            Zephyr was thoroughly confused at that point and I heard Kai from the other side of the room yell “Hell yeah!” and we all chuckled. Well, except for Renard, who was still passed out on the floor, and Zephyr, who apparently didn’t get the reference and/or was frustrated because I dodged his question.

            Silvara and Ravenna were the only ones there who actually knew what my summoning was and, as they said they would, they refrained from saying anything.

            Zephyr looked like he was about to say something else when I cut him off. “Anyways, can you… un-calm him?” I asked, pointing to Renard.

            Zephyr looked down, and shrugged, his legs reforming to his body and he walked over to Renard and nudged him with his foot. “Yo, magic man, nap time’s over.”

            Renard grumbled something and looked up at us all. “What happened?”

            I gestured towards Zephyr with my chin. “Spike here put you to sleep.”

            Zephyr gave me a strange look. “Spike?”

            I glanced up at his hair and shrugged.

            He just sighed. Renard stood up and looked at me. “So… You’re supposed to be the King?”

            I shrugged. “Yup. Ask Cealum if you want details, ‘cause I still don’t know shit about any of that business other than that I _am_ supposed to get the throne at some point. I’m qualified enough due to my summoning, and apparently they had eyes on me for a while so they figure I’m qualified in other ways as well.”

            Renard’s brow knitted together. “What _are_ your traits?”

            I tried to think of another way to dodge the question when I heard Cealum _ping_ into the doorway behind us. I turned to face him and the even newer recruits he had brought with him. None of them seemed confused or anything, so I figured he already explained everything to them. I saw badges visible on a couple of them, so I figured they all had them already. Then I heard Silvara mutter something. “…No.”

            I turned to her and her expression was dire. She had paled a little and her eyes were wide with horror. “What’s wrong, Vara?”

            She just lifted a finger and pointed to one of the recruits standing behind Cealum.

            “Oh, hell no.”


	7. Klaude's a Dipshit and Semi With Silvara

 

            I clenched my fists at the sight of Klaude and then stalked over to Cealum. Silvara followed me, but I didn’t even notice until she pulled ahead of me and grabbed Cealum, bringing him aside. I closed the distance towards a wide-eyed Cealum and a harshly whispering Silvara.

            Silvara’s hand was clenched around the collar of his shirt and she was basically screaming at him in a whisper. “Why the hell did you bring _him_ here? Did you even take ten seconds to _listen_ to the guy?!”

            “Whoa, Vara, what? Who?”

            I pressed my thumbs to my temples and spoke slowly and quietly. “Klaude Marshall. You brought Klaude motherfucking Marshall here, to our hold.” My voice then mimicked Silvara’s as I ripped Cealum’s goggles off his head and waved them around in his face. “Did you even fucking _use_ these?! Are they _broken_?!”

            Cealum sighed and hung his head. “Look, guys, I’m sorry. I didn’t even mean to recruit him. I was explaining things to one of the other recruits and he was apparently standing outside the door the whole time. He heard everything and then came in and asked to be recruited. His stats weren’t great, but they weren’t horrible, and I didn’t want to have to get Jace to mind-wipe him, and we need the people. I didn’t realize you guys even knew him!”

            Silvara let go of his shirt and I handed him back his goggles, my hands slowly covering my face. Silvara wasn’t done yet, though. “Get Jace to erase his memories, then. Right now. Do it.”

            Cealum opened his mouth to say something but I held up a hand to cut him off. “No, Vara. Cealum’s right. We need the… I hesitate to say men, because he barely qualifies, but we need the numbers.” Cealum seemed to sag in relief. “Besides, maybe he can be useful.” I turned back to Cealum. “What was his summoning?”

            He tensed back up at that. “Well, uh…”

            My eyes narrowed. “Cealum… What were his traits?”

            “I… Tanis, don’t be mad.”

            “What. Were. His. Traits?”

            Cealum sagged, defeated. “He wanted to be unmatched in heroics _and_ fighting alone.”

            “…”

            Cealum shuffled his feet a little, looking everywhere but at my eyes.

            “…So he’s completely fucking useless…”

            “I’m sorry.”

            Silvara spoke up now. “Wait, I don’t get it. Isn’t that a good thing? If he’s heroic, he can fight in a group because he has something to fight for, and then he can also fight really well alone.”

            Cealum and I both winced. “See, that’s the logic he was using. And, you’re right, _that_ would be really useful. But he didn’t ask to be unmatched in heroics and unmatched in fighting alone. He asked to be unmatched in heroics and fighting alone. At the same time. His traits literally just cancel each other out instead of compounding. He can only fight well if he’s fighting alone heroically. That’s… a very specific kind of situation. So he’s generally useless.” Cealum nodded in confirmation.

            Silvara groaned. “Even when he has superpowers, he’s still a useless piece of shit.”

            I guess I should mention why Silvara and I hate Klaude so much. There are a lot of reasons, but it all boils down to two, really. He’s a dipshit and he’s a creep. He has no sense of when things are appropriate or inappropriate to say or do and he’s unfathomably stupid—in grade eight, he thought that Tokyo was in California. That’s why _I_ hate him. Silvara hates him because he’s been following her and her friends around like a lost puppy for the past couple years. He refuses to take the hint and leave them alone and he tries way too hard to impress Silvara on an almost constant basis. So, she thinks he’s kinda creepy. Mind you, I also hate him for creeping out Silvara and she also hates him for being a dipshit, but my point stands.

            Anyways, Klaude must have sensed how much we didn’t want him near us because as soon as he caught sight of Silvara, he came bounding over with a stupid grin on his face. When he reached our little trio, he noticed me as well and his smile fell for just a moment before coming back. “Hey, guys! I didn’t know you’d be here!” He adjusted his glasses. Oh, right, descriptions or whatever. He was an inch or so shorter than me, gangly, and covered in acne. He wore square-rimmed glasses that his always-slightly-greasy brown hair clung to. He wore a pair of faded blue jeans and black sneakers and he was wearing a black t-shirt with the Druid symbol from World of Warcraft on it.

            I gave him a flat look. “Well, it’s kind of a secret. Obviously you wouldn’t know we’re here.”

            His eyes narrowed a little when I spoke and I had to stop myself from grinning—getting on his nerves and showing him up in front of Silvara was one of my favorite pastimes. “You know what I meant, Tanis.”

            Silvara spoke this time, her voice slightly sharp. “So, Klaude…” His eyes un-narrowed and he perked up a little, completely oblivious to her tone. I couldn’t help but smirk because I knew what came next. “I heard about your summoning.” Her arms were crossed now.

            He actually got excited about it, the fool he was. “Yeah! It’s awesome! Look!” He _pinged_ and then held out… something… in his hand.

            I took the bait. “What is it?”

            He gave me an “are-you-fucking-daft” look for that. “It’s a sword!”

            I actually had to chuckle at that. Once he said it was a sword, I started to understand. The hilt was made of scratched-up wood with loose linen wrappings around it that hung shoddily off the pummel. There was no guard and the blade was about half a foot wide. It was so rust-covered that it actually looked like the blade was just made out of rust. It was a pretty long blade, though, and I realized the hilt was as well—it was supposed to be a greatsword of some kind. “Klaude, be careful with that thing!” He smirked, probably thinking I meant he could have cut someone. “You could get a splinter or accidentally give someone tetanus!”

            He scowled at me for that and went to reproach when Cealum cut in. “Alright, you two. That’s enough of that. Klaude, go find Sylar and ask him to teach you the basics of swordplay.” He grumbled and slowly trudged off. “Tanis, Vara, I know you don’t like the guy, but please don’t pester him. I’ll make sure he stays busy and out of your hair, so make my job easier and don’t have him be upset all the time. Alright?”

            Silvara and I nodded. Silvara spoke up, though. “Thanks, Cealum. You could always just have him on guard-duty; that’s probably where he’d be least useless.”

            Cealum shrugged. “I suppose, but we have Sri for that. Then, no one even has to be outside. Our holds cloaked right now anyways, so having someone stationed outside would be kind of silly.”

            Silvara blushed. “Oh, right… I forgot about that.”

            I chuckled. “Well, anyways, now that that episode’s all out of the way, it seems like things are quiet enough here for now.” I turned to Silvara. “What do you say we go have what will probably be my last night on Earth for a few months?”

            Her brows knitted and then it dawned on her. “Oh, yeah! Semi was tonight!”

            Cealum grinned and just kind of walked away casually, which I silently thanked him for. “Well, Vara, I guess I’ll see you back on Earth.” I smiled.

            She hugged me before I could teleport away. “Yep! See ya!” She smiled as well and then I could no longer see her.

 

 

* * *

 

 

            When the vertigo from teleporting back to Earth subsided, I was greeted with a mouthful of my pillow. I gave myself a few minutes to get used to having internal organs again—I could feel my blood rushing around inside of me and the contractions of every muscle as I tried to shift around. It was uncomfortable. After about twenty minutes, I sat up and sputtered a little, getting the flavor of cotton out of my mouth and looked at my clock.

            6:42AM

            _Wow, I won’t be late to school for once._

_Y’know, it’s kind of sad that this is a first for you._

_Well, it’s kind of sad that you’re an incorrigible douche bag, but I try not to bring it up._

_You know you love me~_

_And you know I’m not nearly that narcissistic._

_What you know and what I know are two very different things, me._

_I’m just gonna get ready for school now…_

            And so I did. I went downstairs, had a nice, long, thorough shower, went back upstairs and got dressed, went back downstairs again and ate some Froot Loops. My mom gave me a few bucks for lunch and I threw my sweater over my shoulders and trekked out into the freshly powdered snow-covered street. I made my way to Silvara’s and we walked to school. We didn’t talk much on the way there; we were both just excited and nervous, I think. When we got there, Ravenna was waiting for us outside the front doors with a coffee in her hand and who else but Zephyr was by her side. Silvara and I traded a look and walked up to the doors.

            When we got closer, we saw Ravenna’s aggravation playing across her features while Zephyr smirked and continued talking. After a few more seconds of us walking towards them, Ravenna got sick of waiting and walked towards us. She grabbed Silvara and me by the collars of our shirts and started shaking us back and forth. “HELP ME!”

            Used to this kind of treatment by now, I just waited until she stopped shaking me and then spoke. “Zephyr goes to SS?”

            Zephyr had followed just slightly behind Ravenna. “I do now!” He grinned.

            Ravenna threw her hands into the air and started walking away. “HE DOES NOW!”

            Silvara was still recovering from being shaken around—I was usually the one who got abused, after all—so I was the one to speak next. “What do you mean, you do ‘now’?”

            Zephyr’s grin grew three sizes. “Well, you see…”

            “You heard us talking before about SS and so you figured out where it was and now you’re transferring in?”

            His grin immediately fell and showed up on my face instead. “Way to ruin my story!”

            “I try. But why?”

            “You must have noticed by now how boring things are here since we… grouped up. I couldn’t stand not being able to talk about it at all or even have the people around me not know. It’s horrible. People come up to me and start complaining about this guy or that girl or their teacher or about how much studying they have to do or blah blah blah—it’s infuriating how mundane all these people’s problems are after what we’ve been seeing! I had to go somewhere… less mundane.”

            I shrugged. “I guess that’s fair. Why not just stay in The Realm, then?”

            “Psh, and miss out on bugging Venna real-time? I wouldn’t dare!” He smirked and then his features softened a little and his hands went into his pockets. “Besides, you guys are the only ones from the hold who aren’t stuck up, boring, easily-angered, or a combination of the three.”

            At “easily angered,” I glanced to Ravenna, who was sipping at her coffee and glaring daggers at Zephyr.

            He followed my gaze and waved happily, a sarcastic smile on his face. Ravenna just made a frustrated noise and walked into the school. Zephyr chuckled. “Nah, that’s different. She’s not _angry_. She’s just flustered.”

            I shrugged. “If you say so.”

            Silvara finally got bored of our small-talk and just started walking into the school, and we followed. Zephyr went to the office to supposedly get his time-table and I followed Silvara to our friends, where they were, as always, sitting against the wall outside the caf.

            “Hey, all.” I slumped against the wall and slid down into a sitting position.

            Everyone greeted everyone and then they began talking about dresses and stuff. Being the only guy in the group—Klaude doesn’t count—meant that I was just kind of exempt from the conversation and forced to the sidelines for a bit. After a couple minutes of that, Zephyr came strutting down the hall and joined our little group. A couple of the girls gawked a little when he was on his way over but then stopped gawking immediately when they realized he was actually on his way over. “Hello, ladies~.” He gave a short bow because why not. “And Tanis.” He winked at me, smirking.

            He went to say something else when suddenly Renard. And I mean _suddenly_ Renard. He wasn’t there and then he just… appeared from behind Ravenna. Like… we were all talking and just enjoying ourselves and then Zephyr walked over and gave his greeting, and then Renard just walked out from behind Ravenna, like it was the most normal thing in the world. I’d like to point out that Ravenna was leaning up against the wall. “Zephyr, you’re here, too?”

            Ravenna jumped a good foot into the air and spun around, her hand going unbidden to her heart. “Holy crap, Renard, don’t do that!”

            He just rolled his eyes and walked over to stand beside Zephyr, facing the rest of our group. He seemed to be scanning the girls, trying to figure something or other out. Eventually, his eyes settled on Sara, you know, the girl who was kind of the reason I was going to semi with Silvara, and he smiled softly. There was a _ping,_ then, he pulled a bouquet of roses from nowhere because he’s apparently suave like that, and held them out to her. “Would you like to go to semi-formal with me?” Sara immediately started blushing up a storm.

            Zephyr and I looked at each other, eyebrows raised. We looked back to Renard. For a moment, I was worried that the flowers would emit some kind of semi-poisonous gas or something because Renard kind of almost killed Alec with something seemingly tame, but then I realized that Renard wasn’t grinning maniacally and my worry washed away. Sara had taken the flowers now and was nodding slowly and, I think, trying to say yes or some other combination of words. Her voice seemed lost however. Zephyr leaned over to me, then, and whispered. “How the hell did he pull that off?”

            I just snorted and shook my head, whispering back. “Friggin’ Renard, man.”

            The rest of the day was whatever. Not much happened. I got to actually talk to Renard in class again now that he wasn’t out of the loop, so we chatted about Rose-Thorn stuff. Lunch was alright; everyone quickly got to know Zephyr and everyone already kind of knew Renard, so that wasn’t much of an issue. Zephyr ended up trying but failing to match Renard’s absolutely incredible smooth moves when he asked Ravenna to the dance. She, unfortunately for him, already had a date—some senior that had asked her a couple weeks ago. So, instead, he asked Meagan. She basically said “sure, why not,” and that was that. Meagan had already been planning on going to semi with the rest of us just for fun, so it didn’t really change much other than giving her someone specific to dance with during snowballs—slow dances. Classes were, as usual, slow, but I managed to keep myself entertained via magic. I played a couple more pranks and what have you and that was fun. In my math class, I called out every right answer before the teacher could even finish writing the questions on the board—I had taken her lesson plan and left an illusory one on her desk before the class started. That impressed a few people, annoyed others, and made my teacher struggle to decide whether kicking me out for misbehavior or giving me some kind of award was more apt. I got really good at something that day, too, just messing around with my illusions; I managed to practice and perfect making one person see something while everyone else saw that person acting perfectly normal. So, in essence, I could scare the shit out of one person without having anyone else see the thing that scared them, and then _also_ make it so that the person whom I scared seemed to everyone else to have not changed in the slightest, while, in reality, they were screaming. I’d have to try doing it on multiple targets at once later. It’s hard, after all, to keep different illusions going. After all, they have to be reactive to whoever is under their influence. But anyways, other than that, not much happened. Soon, it was time to head on out. We all met up, Zephyr and Renard managing to tag along as well, and headed home. Renard lived the same way Sara did, conveniently, so he walked her home. Zephyr tagged along with Ravenna, since he didn’t even technically live here, everyone else went home as normal, and Silvara and I parted ways as we usually do, with a quick hug, and I made my way home to change into some nicer clothes.

 

* * *

 

 

            A couple hours later, I had eaten—my mom made some pork chops—and gotten into some more proper attire. I was wearing some freshly-ironed black dress-pants, an indigo button-up shirt, and a lilac tie with some kind of pseudo-plaid design. I was also wearing some standard, black dress-shoes—the dull ones that looked professional, not the shiny ones that looked fancy. I had some faux-expensive cologne on and I was feeling pretty damn good, all things told. Silvara said she was getting a drive so she wouldn’t get her dress all mucked up, and my mom needed to stay home to watch my brother, so a fifteen-twenty minute walk found me at the entrance to my school for the second time that day.

            Now, I had been dealing with Rose-Thorns randomly popping up at my school all day, so I shouldn’t have been surprised when I saw none other than Sri standing just off to the side of the entrance to the gym, not having been let in by the ticket-masters. She was wearing her usual dress, which actually made her blend in a little for once. The only reason I noticed her was because she was jumping up and down and waving me over. I sighed and approached her. When I got over to her, she stopped bouncing and just smiled sweetly at me. “Hey, Tanis~.”

            I smirked and shook my head a little. “What are you doing here, Sri?”

            She put her hands on her hips and rolled her eyes as she said “I’m here to dance, duh!”

            I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Duh…” I ran my hand down my face and shook my head again. “I meant, why are you at _my_ school’s dance? You’re not attending here, too, are you? Aren’t you too old?”

            Sri gasped and gave me a mock-offended look. “Are you saying I look _old_ , Tanis?” She huffed and crossed her arms, her nose held high.

            “Do you even have a ticket?” I wasn’t going to bother playing her game or I’d be there for an hour without even stepping a foot on the dance floor.

            She smiled sweetly at me again. “Well~, I was hoping _you_ could help me with that, actually…”

            I sighed. “What do you want me to do?”

            Her eyes seemed to brighten, even in the relatively dim light, knowing I would do whatever she asked, and she pulled me down to her height so she could whisper in my ear. “Okay, so, I don’t have a ticket… But you do! So, you know what they look like, so you can just forge me one with your magic-y-ness!”

_You have begun the side quest: Get Sri into the dance. For bonus gold, use magic instead of just walking her in when no one’s paying attention._

_…Did you just game-ify your life?_

_Don’t judge me. I do what I want._

            I shrugged. “Easy enough, I suppose.” I pulled out my ticket and looked it over. It was relatively simple; it just had a number, my name, and the name of the event on it and it was on purple cardstock. I cloaked, leaving a clone in my place, walked to the ticket-master’s table, and made it appear as though nothing was amiss as I sifted through their registration book, looking for empty number entries. There were a few that were empty, so I grabbed a pen that was conveniently laying off to the side, wrote Sri’s name in, took note of the number, and put everything back the way it was. I dropped all my illusions, back in the spot of my clone, and conjured up a ticket for Sri in my pocket. I pulled it out and handed it to her. “Now, don’t lose your ticket again, alright?” Someone had been idly watching us as we talked, so I figured it’d be best to be at least slightly inconspicuous about it.

            Sri looked confused for a second but stopped caring quickly. “Thanks, Tanis!” She hopped up and hugged me around the neck and I had to lean over so she could let herself back down.

            “No problem, Sri.” I smiled and we walked to the ticket-master’s table—a second time, for me. We showed them our tickets, they flipped through their book to find our names, and then let us in the gym.

            Apparently, I was a bit early. There were about fifteen other people littering the floor, just kind of chatting while the DJ played some standard pop-songs. A few people were bobbing their heads or tapping their feet as they talked over the slightly-too-loud music but the room was relatively calm. I imagined that would change in the next twenty or so minutes.

            Sri and I were chatting about wielder stuff for a few minutes when people started to pile in a little more. Eventually, Sri apparently spotted a target, ‘cause she grinned, told me she’d talk to me later, and skipped off towards some unsuspecting potential dance-partner. I looked around briefly and didn’t see anyone of note and walked over to the food stand. I picked up a bottle of water and leaned against the wall, just bobbing my head in beat to the music—some kind of Spanish pop-rap song that I couldn’t understand for the life of me. After another song or two, I spotted Zephyr’s trademark green hair—though it wasn’t spiky anymore, he had straightened it apparently, and it sat relatively flat on his head, threatening to pop back up again. His bangs covered his face a little. It was an interesting look on him; it made him look more mature. He was wearing a standard white dress-shirt and black dress pants. I started toward him and Meagan, who were just chatting about something or other; they weren’t actually dancing or anything so I wasn’t worried about interrupting. Meagan was wearing a pale blue, strapless dress and matching flats with little white bows on them.

            I was almost over to them when Zephyr noticed me and waved me over, calling “Yo, Tanis!” over the music and rabble of the other people.

            I cleared the gap and scooted in close to them—the room was really starting to fill in now. The edges were relatively bare, but Zephyr and Meagan had been right in the thick of the crowd. I figured that suited Zephyr, to be right in the center of things. “Hey, guys!”

            Meagan smiled and waved. “Hey!”

            “You guys seen any of the others around?”

            Meagan shrugged but Zephyr laughed. “No one from our usual group. I saw this really short girl on the way in, though…” He winked at me.

            I scratched the back of my head and chuckled. “Yeah, Sri asked me if I could get her in, so, well, I did.”

            Meagan looked confused at that, rightly so considering she shouldn’t have any idea who Sri was, but Zephyr just laughed again. The song switched to some electronic-metal song and Zephyr perked up. “Oh, I fuckin’ love this song! And it looks like your date’s here, Tanis. Come on, Meagan!” He grabbed Meagan and led her out of the crowd and into a slightly more open area so he could rock out.

            I turned to where Zephyr had been looking before he left and, lo and behold, there was Silvara, standing in the doorway at the other end of the room. I… shut down a little, when I saw her. She was gorgeous. Her dress was black at the top, on the shoulders and neck, down to about her waist, where the black ended in fading zig-zag lines going around her that quickly faded to a pure white, the same colour of her hair. Her hair… she had it up in a kind of Asian-style bun with the crossed sticks holding it in place, and there were strands at the front that were loose and came down over her shoulders, contrasting beautifully with the black of the dress. She also had on some shiny black flats, and to top the whole thing off, she had a golden necklace and two thin golden bracelets that stood out from everything, accentuating her silver hair and the black of her dress.

_I…_

_…Wow._

_…Yeah…_

_Damn…_

            After that little back and forth with myself, I finally managed to snap out of my reverie and started towards the doors. Silvara was just kind of looking around, trying to spot me or any of our other friends, I assumed. I didn’t get very far before she spotted me—y’know, ridiculously good sight and all. She smiled a bright, genuinely happy smile and waved, and I couldn’t help but smile back. She looked absolutely incredible and I’ll be the first to admit I was starting to get butterflies. I dodged through the crowd as best I could and finally made it over to the doors. Once I got myself free from the masses of half-dancing teens, Silvara bounced over and hugged me. “Hey, Tanis!” She pulled back a little quickly, glanced around again and then looked at me once more, smiling. I noticed just a hint of pink on her cheeks but I couldn’t tell if it was an actual blush or just makeup.

            I imagined I was a little flush, though. And I know for a fact I wasn’t wearing any makeup. “Hey, Vara.” I smiled and shoved my hands into my pockets, trying to look a little calmer than I was feeling. I forced my voice to be steady and I spoke again. “Zephyr and Meagan are back that way.” I jerked my chin back in the direction they had gone. “And Sri is around here somewhere, too.” I was starting to get over my little freak-out now. Every time I looked into Silvara’s eyes, though, I had to glance away again and steady my breathing. I was kind of losing my mind a little; after all, this was my first chance to really try to romance Silvara and I didn’t want to fuck it all up somehow.

            “Sri’s here…?” Silvara’s eyebrows rose.

            I chuckled. “Yeah, she said she wanted to come to a school dance again after so long out of school, so I…” I noticed someone in the corner of my eye looking our way, and I lowered my voice. “…I forged one for her with a little bit of magic.”

            Silvara smirked and lightly slugged me on the shoulder. “Look at you, eh! Breakin’ the rules!” She winked at me, grinning.

            I grinned sheepishly and looked over to where that guy was. He wasn’t there anymore. I sighed, relieved that I wasn’t caught, and looked back to Silvara. “I’ve been fuckin’ with people all week using my little tricks,” I said, waving my hand in a circle, letting some mist flow out of it for extra effect that I realized shortly afterwards she couldn’t see. Just dropping my hand would have made me look like a complete weirdo at that point, so I conjured up a white rose and stuck it behind Silvara’s ear, looking kind of gentlemanly and cool instead.

            She giggled. “Y’know, even if it’s a different colour, if you’re just going to stick a rose in my hair every time you’re trying to be smooth, it’s gonna get old.” She smirked. Despite her words, I could tell she appreciated the gesture; she flushed a little—it wasn’t just makeup this time—and her eyes lit up a little.

            “Oh, come on, it’s symbolic!” I grinned.

            She chuckled and rolled her eyes. “I suppose.” She lifted her hand to the flower and felt the petals, sighing. “The ones you make are so soft…” She looked up at me. “They don’t wither, either. Did you know that?”

            I knit my brows together. “You still have the other one I made you?”

            She froze for a second and then lowered her hand from the new rose in her hair. “W-Well… I kind of forgot it was in my hair until someone pointed out that it looked nice and I thought it would be rude to just get rid of it, but I also didn’t want anyone to ask where I got it from, ‘cause I wouldn’t be able to explain it to them without mentioning our powers, so I put it in my bag and brought it home…” I’d like to point out that she was saying all of this with the same breath.

            I grinned. “Vara…”

            She stopped talking and snapped her eyes up to look at me, her cheeks going a little pink again. “…Yes?”

            I chuckled. “It’s fine. Relax. You are allowed to keep gifts.” I smirked. “I just didn’t think you would have kept the rose.” I shrugged.

            “…Well, I did.” She grinned sheepishly.

            I smiled and looked around again. “So, wanna go see what the others are doing?” I’m not much of a dancer, generally speaking, and they weren’t playing a slow dance yet, so dancing with Vara wasn’t a thing that would make sense at the time.

            She smiled, losing her blush, and nodded. She took my hand in hers and began to lead me through the crowd, where she apparently saw someone or other. Now, her holding my hand was more a practicality than anything—after all, we were in a tight crowd, and getting separated would have sucked—but intertwining our fingers together was something else entirely. That, we did because we wanted to. And it was awesome.

            We cut our way through the crowd, Silvara skipping through the gaps between people just in time for the next gap to appear, and I was more-or-less being dragged through them as well. Had I have been paying more attention to her and less to myself, trying not to bump into anyone on the way through, I probably would have seen her moving not unlike back in the forest when we had our little private training session. Needless to say, we made it to where we were going in a mere dozen or so seconds. Where we were going seemed to be to Ravenna. It was strange not seeing her with her riding cap on; her hair was almost as long as Silvara’s. It flowed down to just past her shoulders where it ended in tight curls, hanging over her blood-red dress. She was wearing red heels to match it—which seemed strange to me… Ravenna, in heels? Preposterous. But yeah, that was basically it. The dress had an interesting design; the left shoulder had a different kind of fabric stitched into it that wrapped down and around under her right arm. It was wavy, but not frilly. I don’t know; it looked nice, though.

            When I was finished taking in Ravenna’s apparel, I noticed she was doing the same to Silvara. She was pointedly looking Silvara up and down, as though inspecting her. After a moment, she nodded crisply and looked at me, putting a firm hand on my shoulder. “Ya did good, kid. Ya did good.”

            I chuckled. “I’m not sure if I’m supposed to say thank you or if Vara is.”

            “Psh, you could both say thank you.” She crossed her arms at that and Silvara and I just rolled our eyes.

            I glanced around Ravenna and didn’t see anyone eyeing her up or standing close enough for it to be considered date-ly. I knitted my eyebrows together. “Where’s your date?”

            Silvara looked around, too, now. “Yeah, I thought you said you were coming with Ryan! I don’t see him anywhere.”

            She shrugged. “He got sick this morning and couldn’t make it. No big deal, though.” She shrugged again. “That’s why I’ve got you guys!” She grinned. It wasn’t her normal, wide, Ravenna-grin, though, so I could tell she was at least a little forlorn about being stood up, even if the guy had a legitimate excuse. After all, she shrugged _twice_ in less than three sentences.

            I smirked. “Kinda wishing you took Zephyr up on his offer, hm?”

            She looked like a deer in headlights for a second, and I figured she must have just been thinking the same thing.

            “Don’t worry, I can’t read minds.”

            Her eyes widened slightly more and then she narrowed them at me.

            I sighed. “Whatever ridiculous thing you just tried to think at me, I don’t know what it is. Trust me.”

            Her eyes un-narrowed.

            “Y’know, I just had the weirdest Deja-vu…”

            Silvara clapped and closed her eyes, nodding solemnly. “It’s settled, then, Raven. You need to dance with Zephyr on the second slow song.”

            Ravenna turned to her, looking confused. “Why the second slow song?”

            I spoke up. “Meagan’s his date. The first one belongs to her.”

            Silvara nodded and Ravenna sighed. “Do I _have_ to?”

            Silvara nodded and I chuckled. “You don’t _have_ to, but you obviously want to. This is a perfect excuse to do so!”

            Ravenna blushed slightly and feigned insult. “How would _you_ know if I wanted to dance with him or not?!”

            I snorted. “More-or-less by that response, mixed with that hint of a non-makeup blush you’re sporting.”

            Her blush increased. “I’m not blushing!”

            “Ravenna, your face is almost as red as your dress. Besides, Vara told me you liked him.”

            Ravenna seemed actually insulted now as she turned to Silvara. “I told you not to tell anyone!”

            Silvara was trying to sputter something out about not having told me. I laughed openly now. “So you _do_ like him!”

            Ravenna turned back to me with a confused look. In the span of about three seconds, it turned from confusion to shock to worry. “You son of a bitch, you better not tell anyone! Especially not him!”

            I stopped laughing and grinned. It was a very evil grin and Ravenna noticed its malicious intent. Her look of worry deepened. “Now, Ravenna… Why would I tell him…” I glanced behind her, “…when he already knows?” I waved over Ravenna’s shoulder. “Hey, Zephyr.”

            Ravenna got that deer-in-headlights look again as she slowly turned around and came face-to-face with the green-haired boy. He was smiling openly, a devious glint in his eye. “Hello, Tanis, Vara.” He looked down to Ravenna—y’know, Zephyr was actually really tall. Like… _really_ tall, almost as tall as Kai. I didn’t notice before because he was floating and didn’t have legs. “So, I heard tale through the grapevine…” His arms slid around Ravenna’s waist as he was saying that and I promptly dragged Silvara away from them so they could be left to their devices. It was then that I realized a slow song had just come on.

_Well, that was perfectly timed._

_Yeah, sometimes it’s like we’re part of a story or something._

_That’s just silly, you silly._

_No, think about it. Legit, when people are around us and things are happening, they don’t_ stop _happening until everyone’s gone._

_Isn’t that just like… how things work?_

_…True, I guess. I don’t know; I still think it’s weird._

_I think you’re paranoid._

_I think you’re an asshole._

_I’m glad we both agree that you’re an asshole._

            Silvara spoke up as I was trying to drag her to a relatively open space so we could dance. “Aw, Tanis, I wanted to see what happened!”

            I chuckled, stopping in an open-as-it-was-going-to-get space. “Leave them be for now. You can question them for details all you want later. Wouldn’t want to get in the way of them, either, would you?” I wrapped my arms around Silvara’s waist now and we began to turn lazily and dance. “I know I wouldn’t. It would have taken them forever to get together at the rate they were going.”

            Silvara threw her arms over my shoulders and spun in step with me. “As long as it took for us?” She grinned.

            My grin turned sheepish and then I realized what she’d just said and I kind of blanched for a second. “…Are we together now?”

            Silvara, somewhat surprisingly, just rolled her eyes at that. “Duh.” She pulled herself in a little closer to me. “I mean, y’know, unless you don’t want to be…”

            “N-No, I do, I just—”

            She laughed. “I’m teasing you, relax.”

            I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. Then I chuckled lightly. “Sorry. Nervous.”

            She nodded. “So am I, a little.”

            We danced in silence for a moment. I broke said silence. “You look fucking gorgeous, by the way…” She looked up to me and I smiled.

            She blushed and looked away. “Thanks…”

            I grinned. “I mean, you always look gorgeous, but the dress is definitely helping.”

            She punched me in the chest at that. “Shush, you.” I saw her grinning, even though she was doing her best to stare at the floor and not meet my eyes.

            “Now who’s all nervous, hm?” I grinned and caught her hand before she punched me again. “Hey, now, none of that…” I chuckled, placing her hand lightly back onto my shoulder.

            She tried to hold back a smile as she pouted. I rolled my eyes and she pulled herself closer, her arms going around my neck to my back. She rested her head on my shoulder. “…Jerk.”

            I just snorted and shook my head and we continued dancing.

            About halfway through the song, though, I heard two _pings_. They didn’t belong from anyone I had met and there was something… odd… about the tone. While the _pings_ were usually a light, lilting sound, these two pings were… deep. They sounded less like a pin hitting ceramic and more like a droplet hitting water.

 _Tanis… Remember Rusin’s_ ping _? It was really sharp. These ones are really dull. Probably different holds. Be careful._

 _Since when did you become the expert on_ pings _?_

_I’m not fucking around, Tanis. Get the hell out of there and make sure all your Rose-Thorns are safe._

            I pulled back from Silvara a little, actually nervous. “Vara…”

 _Fuck, how do I get her out without explaining the_ pings _?_

_Just explain them to her, then. It’s fine. She won’t tell anyone if you tell her not to._

            She was looking up at me expectantly. “What is it, Tanis…?”

            I glanced around the room to where the _pings_ came from and then back to her. “Okay… I haven’t told you this before… because… I don’t know, I just wasn’t ready, I guess.”

_Oh, God._

            Silvara’s eyes lit up a little. “…and I don’t know; this isn’t something I can say to just anybody, it’s… special. But I trust you…”

_Oh my God, please no._

_Shut up for a second! I can’t think!_

            She pulled herself a little closer to me and was looking right in my eyes now. I wasn’t sure or not but I thought her eyes were glistening a little. “I…”

            She leaned up and kissed me. Right on the lips. And it was… I don’t know; honestly, I was just kind of confused.

_You fucking moron._

            I pulled back and knitted my brows. “What are you doing…?”

            Her eyes went wide and now they were really glistening. “I-I’m sorry…! I thought…” Was she crying?

            “Vara, what’s—”

            She let go of me, turned, and started running for the doors, ducking and weaving between the people in the crowd. I think I heard her apologize again before she left.

_Wow. That just happened._

_I don’t get it. What did I do?!_

_Dude, if you had have kept on like that for a little longer, we might have hit second base by the end of the night._

_What…?_

_…_

_Oh… fuck._

_Also, there are still two unknown wielders somewhere around here. And Vara’s alone now. And mentally unsound at the moment. You might want to, oh, I don’t know, go after her?_

_Oh, fuck!_

            I took off, weaving through the crowd as well. Unfortunately, she was lithe and had the reflexes of a god. Meanwhile, I was chunky and not used to physical exercise. Suffice it to say, she was making way better headway than I was. The only reason I even knew where she was going was because there was only one exit in the place. And so it came to be that when I parted the crowd at the end of the room, and made it out the doors, I only caught a glimpse of Silvara’s dress as she flitted around a corner up the hall a ways.

            “Vara, wait!” I looked to my side and noticed the ticket-masters were… hopefully unconscious and not dead, their heads down on the table in front of them. I looked back up the hall and broke into a sprint, beginning to cover myself in mist.

_You’re slow._

_Shut up, I’m trying, okay!_

_No, I mean,_ you’re _slow._

_Shut up, I’m trying, okay!_

_No, I mean, YOU are slow._

_I don’t—oh!_

            I created a clone of myself and gave it rocket-boots—I was under pressure, okay, shut up. It flew ahead of me at a ridiculous speed and I navigated it around the corner with ease. I closed my eyes to look through its and I started flying down the next hall. I stopped at the next corner and looked down both ways. I saw Silvara run through an open door into some classroom or another. I flew my clone down the hall and into the room just in time to see Silvara get her badge knocked from her hands by some guy.

_Wait… That’s the fucker that was watching me all fucking night! When I made Sri’s ticket and when I was talking to Vara about it! He’s been shadowing me the whole damn time!_

            He saw my clone and his eyes went wide. I signaled my clone to pile-drive him at Mach-speeds but his brain must have been running just a little faster. He dove forward, grabbed Silvara, stroked the face of his badge, and there was another dull water-droplet _ping_ and they were both gone as my clone smashed into the wall. I was about to disperse it to save myself the literal headache when I heard a voice.

            “And here I was, ready to knock you out.” My clone craned its neck and I saw a girl. Her hair was long and blonde and full. “Ha! ‘Demon of the Rose’ my ass. You’re just some kid!” She had her arms crossed over her chest as she leaned in the doorframe, smirking at me, her bright green eyes taunting me with an excited glint.

            Something happened then, when I saw her eyes, eyes just like Silvara’s. All I could think of was getting Silvara back and the only way I could think to do so was by killing this bitch in front of me. My clone… shifted. It dissipated and I lost my vision in the room. The last thing I saw through that clone’s eyes was the girl’s smirk quickly changing as the excited glint turned into a terrified one.

            And then I heard the scream.


	8. Shield-Bearer Hall and Infiltration Initiatives

            I ran as fast as I could. I sprinted down the hall, full-tilt, more subconsciously than anything. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I remembered the way I had come as my clone. My legs took that information when I couldn’t and I all-too-slowly found myself standing in the doorway of the previously trapped classroom. I looked at where Silvara had been. She wasn’t there. There was a Rose-Thorn badge on the floor, though. I looked at where the guy had been standing. He wasn’t there. I looked beside me to the door frame and only saw blood. There was a trail of it leading to the ground. My eyes followed it down. There lied the girl. Blood was pooling beneath her. Blue spikes were jutting out from just about every part of her body and blood was dripping off of every single one. There was a palm-sized golden pentagon on the floor beside her. I leaned down and flipped it over. There was a picture of a shield on it. The shield slowly faded away. The girl did, too, and the spikes and blood turned to mist. When the girl had completely faded, there lied a book on the ground. The blood was gone. There was bile on the ground instead. It didn’t get on the book or the badge, though. I didn’t know how it got there but my throat was burning and I was bent over. One of my hands was on the doorframe, holding me up. There was more bile on the floor and my throat burnt even more and then I realized I had been puking. Something touched my back and something wet was falling from my face and I realized it was Ravenna and I was crying and I had been puking and everything started clicking into place in my mind and Silvara was gone and the Shield-Bearers took her and I had to get her back and—

            My face was pulled up by Ravenna and she slapped me hard. I started being able to hear things again. “ _TANIS!_ ”

            I shook my head slowly and rubbed my cheek. I could feel it again and it hurt. “She’s gone.”

            “Tanis! Thank God, I thought I lost you, there. What happened? I heard a scream. Who’s gone?”

            “She’s gone. Silvara’s gone. They took her and now she’s gone.” My fingers curled up in my hair and I didn’t even remember putting them there and I must have started tugging because I think my head was hurting and—

            Ravenna slapped me again. “ ** _TANIS!_** ”

            I looked up again and saw Ravenna’s worried expression. And then I noticed Zephyr was behind her, his head darting from side-to-side as he looked down the hall. “They’re gone, Zephyr. I killed one…” I looked back down to the book on the floor and felt my stomach lurch again. I looked away, back to where the guy who had been watching me all night had been. “…the other one took Silvara.”

            Ravenna followed my gaze and seemed confused and worried but she spoke very slowly and very calmly. “Who took her, Tanis?”

            That’s when everything finally came back to me. I opened my eyes a little more and everything looked a little clearer, a little less hazy. Everything sounded clearer. There was no ringing in the background anymore. I could feel the burn in my throat and the sting on my cheek. I could smell the stench of the vomit on the floor and I could taste it on the roof of my mouth. I looked up to Ravenna. Everything was still blurry, though. I wiped the few remaining tears from my eyes. “Sorry… sorry. The Shield-Bearers. They were here. I… Vara and I had a misunderstanding and she ran away.” I paused, looked back to her badge, still lying face-up in the middle of the room. I walked over to it and looked down at it. “I chased her here.” I bent over and picked it up. “There were two Shield-Bearers here. I was too late, though. Before I could stop the guy, he teleported away with Vara. The other one… Well, I don’t exactly know _how_ I did it, but I killed her. That’s her book, there. And her badge, there beside it.”

            Ravenna looked confused still. She was also still obviously worried but the confusion won out for the time being. “What do you mean ‘her book’?”

            “Whenever a wielder dies, they leave a book behind. It’s their perspective of their life since the first moment they enter The Realm.” I shook my head. “It’s not important right now. The Shield-Bearers have Vara.” I gave Ravenna a stern look. “We need to get her back immediately.”

            Ravenna nodded. “Right. Do you know where their hold is?”

            I blinked. “Fuck, no, I—”

            “I know where it is!” I looked behind Ravenna, and behind Zephyr, and saw Sri standing there, a determined look on her face. “Lantigua showed me where it was so I could spy on them in my off time.”

            “Good! Hurry, show us! We can teleport there!”

            Zephyr turned around now. “Tanis, you can’t just barge into Shield-Bearer Hall of all places and expect to even make it out alive, let alone get your friend back.”

            I felt myself starting to panic again. “Well, what the hell am I _supposed_ to do, Zephyr?! I can’t just let them keep her there! Who knows what they could be doing to her!”

            “And who knows what they’d do to you if you got caught, too!” Zephyr’s clothes were flapping around him now and mine were as well. Ravenna’s hair was going crazy and Sri was trying to hold her skirt down. I realized it was Zephyr’s doing.

            “Then I won’t get caught! I’ll just stealth myself! It was easy enough to get into Sword-Arm Hall!”

            The wind picked up a little. Zephyr’s voice followed suit. “You don’t understand, Tanis! The Sword-Arms are good at offense! The Shield-Bearers are good at defense! It’s what they _do_! It won’t be as easy as just making yourself invisible and walking in! They’ll have traps; they’ll have wielders crawling all over the place; they’ll have detectors and sensors and all kinds of crazy shit and you _will_ get caught! _No one_ has made it out of that place once they went in unless the Shield-Bearers _wanted_ them to! And you’re our King! They won’t be letting you out!”

            I looked at the floor and pressed my palms into my eyes. I pressed a little harder, and a little harder still, until they went numb, then I let my hands fall and the blood rushed back to my eyes. The temporary darkness lifted and I was calm again. I looked up to Zephyr. “I’m sorry… I’m sorry, Zephyr. You’re right.” The wind died down to nothing and after a moment of silence, Zephyr nodded for me to continue. “I know we can’t just barge in. In fact, this is probably exactly what they want—me going there myself so they can capture me, too. But we also can’t just leave her there. We’ll need to compromise. Sri, show us where their hold is. Zephyr, go back to Rose-Thorn Hall and tell the others what happened—tell Cealum first if you can. Sri, after we go, you follow Zephyr. I’ll take Ravenna with me and we’ll do what we can. I’ll put us in full stealth mode. Ravenna can make us a way in and out from the grasslands and she can make us doors where we can’t find them, too.”

            Sri perked up a little. “I can use my clairvoyance to guide you guys through, too! I’ll scout ahead and find Vara, and then I’ll use my telekinesis to pick up the rubble from whatever Ravenna blows up and I’ll make a trail. Just follow the bread crumbs!” She smiled in spite of the situation and it lightened everyone else’s moods as well.

            “Thank you, Sri. Now—”

            We all heard footsteps and whirled towards the door. Zephyr face-palmed and Ravenna groaned quietly. Sri pretended not to look and I felt an aneurism coming on. It was Klaude.

            “Klaude, what the hell are you doing here?”

            He gave me an indignant look at that. “Well, I _was_ enjoying semi-formal until I saw what happened between you and Vara,” I cringed when he said her nickname, “and I followed you here.” He smiled, proud of himself for some reason. “I heard everything and I want to help!”

            I sighed. “Klaude, no, we already have enough people going. We just need a quick stealth team to—”

            “But I can help! After all, don’t most teams come in threes? It’s the perfect number!”

            “Klaude, even if I _did_ want another person going, it would be someone with a better skill-set for this kind of mission, like Lantigua, who is stealthy, or Alec or Sylar, who would be good in a fight if we were ambushed, or—”

            “Sylar’s been teaching me, though! I’m getting a lot better!”

            “A lot better still isn’t good. This isn’t anything personal, Klaude, we just don’t need another person going along with us. We need a small, quick team and—”

            “Of course it’s personal! You’ve never liked me, ever! Besides, I have a good enough ‘skill-set’, okay? I’ve been training just like the rest of you!”

            I ran a hand down my face. “Fine. Come along, then. If you get us caught, I swear to God, I will leave you to die, and you will have no one to blame but yourself.”

            “Whatever. I’m going.”

_He’s persistent, I’ll give him that._

_Yeah… That’s one word for it._

            I looked at Ravenna and Klaude, then down at myself. “We all need to get changed into something a little better-suited for this. I say we all teleport home, get changed, teleport back here. Then we’ll get Sri to show us to the hold. Sound good, everyone?”

            I got a chorus of approvals, and then _pings_ , in response. I nodded to Sri and then I was in my room. I ditched my restricting suit, threw on a comfy pair of slacks and a t-shirt, cloaked myself and teleported to my house’s door, slipped on my normal shoes, and then teleported back to the classroom. Everyone else—excluding Zephyr, who must already have gone back to the hold as I instructed—was already back and I uncloaked. They were in their usual outfits again. I raised a brow to Ravenna. “You got changed out of that dress pretty quick.”

            “It wasn’t worth the time. I no longer own a dress. Anyways, let’s go. I don’t want to waste any more time.” She gave Klaude a pointed look at that.

            I shrugged, agreeing that the dress wasn’t important enough to waste valuable Silvara-saving time on and I looked to Sri. She nodded and held out her crystal ball. She _pinged_ and an image formed in the ball of a small, bunker-looking structure surrounded by flowing grass. And that’s all it really was. It was just a one-hundred-square-foot gray, stone box. There was no door, no windows, no decorations. It was just a box. Klaude, Ravenna, and I all looked into the ball. It did that weird thing where it filled my vision again and then I was standing a few hundred feet off of the thing, tall, wavy grass lapping at my thighs and waist. Ravenna had the same idea I did as she _pinged_ and appeared a few hundred feet off of the hold as well. She was a ways away from me, but that was quickly remedied as I teleported over to her.

            Klaude, however, was a fucking dipshit, as usual. He _pinged_ and teleported _right against the fucking wall_ of the hold and was looking around madly, trying to spot us. I conjured up a humming bird, sent it to him, caught his attention, and had it fly back towards Ravenna and me. His eyes followed it and he saw us and he began to _run_ over to us. I sent the hummingbird back, and turned it to noise. “Teleport, you fucking dolt.”

            He did. I slapped him in the back of the head and Ravenna just shook her own head slowly with her eyes closed. Klaude glared at me for a moment but then realized why what he did was so stupid and got over it.

            I looked around the surrounding area and let some mist trickle from my hands. I moved it so it spread throughout the grass all around us for about ten meters in every direction. I noticed it was being produced a lot faster than usual and it moved a lot quicker, too. I shifted it into the image of normal, flowing grasslands. So, essentially, nothing seemed to change, except we were no longer visible. I saw Klaude’s ethereal silhouette freaking out a little at his lack of a body and Ravenna’s looking around and listening, trying to figure out where the two of us went. I sent some mist to them and made it so that neither of them could see the other illusion. “Sorry about that, guys. But now we’re silent and invisible to everyone without true-sight and each other.”

            Klaude nodded, being a gamer and completely understanding the logic apparently. Ravenna looked at me like I had a second head. “What the hell is ‘true-sight’?”

            I laughed. “It’s a gaming thing, mainly. It just means unless they can see through illusions and stuff.”

            “Oh. Well, okay.”

            I nodded to her. “Alright, start exploding stuff. We’ve got a ten-meter radius around us where nothing can see or hear us. Make a hole going down for… Oh, I’d say about fifteen feet, and then start explosion-digging toward the hold; give us at least a seven-foot ceiling. We’ll be underground enough that they shouldn’t have anything set up to detect us unless they just have some kind of super matter-ignoring barrier or something.”

            Ravenna rolled her eyes. “I doubt they have a barrier, Tanis.”

            Klaude looked over at her. “Shhh, don’t jinx it!”

            She just rolled her eyes again. “Alright, guys. Stand back. Don’t want you caught in the crossfire.”

            I stood to the edge of my illusion and Klaude almost over-stepped until I grabbed his arm and forced him to get into a better position. He gave me a nasty look when I grabbed him and I just pointed at the ground. He either got the message or realized I didn’t care how upset he was because he lost the nasty look and turned his attention back on Ravenna.

            Ravenna dropped her hand and pointed her palm at the ground. A little glowing orb, about the size of a baseball, formed on the ground, where her palm was facing, and Ravenna’s eyes widened a little. I noticed it was just like my blue mist and Alec’s green mist except that it was made of orange misty-strands and gave off a fair amount of light. The orb disappeared and she looked at her hands.

            I cautiously stepped forward a little. “What’s wrong?”

            She looked up at me. Her grin was just a little too wide for my liking and her eyes had a manic glint about them. She started laughing; it was a deep, over joyous laugh. “Oh, Tanis… Nothing is wrong _at all_.” I threw some mist around Klaude and myself, cloaked us normally, and grabbed his sleeve, pulling him back until we were well out of range of whatever the hell Ravenna had in mind. Another orb of light formed. But this was no small orb, hovering just above the ground. No, this was an orb the size of Zephyr’s ego and infinitely more intimidating. All jokes aside, it was about the size of a yoga ball and I decided to take Klaude and myself just a little bit further away. I’m damn lucky I did, too. The yoga-ball-sized orange, glowing misty orb kind of thinned out and grew long, and then…

            Okay, so… Y’know how I said that she left a crater in the sparring room when she got pissed off at Zephyr? It took out about a full two courts, essentially—her whole court plus half of either court beside hers. Yeah, that was a pretty big boom. But _this_ … Words can’t do it justice. The sound was beyond deafening. If we weren’t in The Realm, where physicalities are a matter of debate and you can sleep off anything short of death, I’m pretty sure I’d still have sunspots in my eyes and ringing in my ears. There was a white flash bright enough to rival the Sun and a sound so loud I didn’t hear it. I didn’t hear _anything_ because it was so loud. If you’ve ever been in a cave and turned your flashlight off or if you’ve been in a basement with no windows and you turned out the lights and you couldn’t see anything, and I mean _nothing_ —like, your hands are imperceptible to you disregarding proprioception… Imagine that, but for your ears. There’s just nothing there. You could cover them or you could scream right into them and you wouldn’t notice a single damned difference. I literally went deaf for a few moments. It was horrifying. But it was also incredibly awesome. Well, once my vision and hearing returned to me and I realized I wasn’t dead, that is.

            I blinked my way through the sun-spots as my ears began to ring and I looked to where Ravenna had been standing a moment before. For a moment, I panicked, thinking she might have accidentally killed herself or something. But then I saw the lip of the hole she made. I ran to its edge—right at the edge of my mist, thankfully—and peered down. Klaude was still on the ground over where we’d been standing. I’d make sure he was alive in a moment. When I looked into the hole, I saw her, standing at the bottom, looking at her hands. I uncloaked myself and just kind of stared for a few moments. The diameter of her crater, as I said, was just to the edge of my mist-circle. But the hole went _deep_. When I finally collected myself, I had to yell down to her to get her attention.

            “What the hell was that?!”

            Ravenna looked up to me and smiled. “I made you your damn hole, that’s what!”

            I just shook my head in disbelief. “We’re lucky you didn’t do that back at _our_ hold when you snapped at Zephyr!”

            She laughed. “I _couldn’t_ do this back then! Believe me, I tried!”

_Our mist was more efficient, too… This can’t be a coincidence._

_Well, what’s different about now than back then?_

_I… I don’t know. What we’re doing now actually matters, I guess? I mean… The Sword-Arms are offense, right? And the Shield-Bearers are defense… Maybe we have to be fighting_ for _something to use our full potential._

_It’s a solid enough theory. It seems too broad, though. We’ll figure it out later._

            I looked back to Klaude, who seemed to be coming to his senses at last. I yelled at him. “Hey, Klaude, get your ass over here!” He shambled to his feet and started rubbing his eyes as he walked over to us.

            Ravenna called back up to me. “You guys can come down any time! I’m gonna start going horizontal now!”

            “Alrighty!” Klaude made it over to me and I uncloaked him. “Welp, down the rabbit hole.” I shoved him in, not wanting to wait for him to make up his mind about jumping, and then hopped in after him. He landed on his ass and I landed on my feet. All the soft, broken-up dirt at the bottom meant that neither of us was hurt at all. I noticed some of the dirt picking itself up and condensing into little cubes, where it flew off to one side of the hole and began to stack itself into a neat pile. It looked super-cool. “That you, Ravenna?” I didn’t take my eyes off the floating dirt but I heard her turn around.

            “Uh… No, that isn’t me.”

            I smiled and waved to a random spot, my eyes still not leaving the swirling dirt. “Hey, Sri.”

            Ravenna chuckled and turned back around. I heard her tapping on the wall of ground that led towards the hold and I figured she was placing bombs throughout it or something. I honestly wasn’t paying that much attention. The dirt was swirling around us like the snow off of a roof on a windy, winter day. But none of it got into our eyes or in our way and then it just floated up and became packed-up little cubes. Those cubes then swirled and tumbled over to the rest of the cubes and found a spot to rest. Rinse and repeat for about a good five minutes and all the dirt that was under us was gone, save for the un-exploded ground, of course. There was a good forty-foot tall stack of the things in about seven rows. The cubes themselves were about the size of Rubik’s cubes. It didn’t reach even a third of the height of the hole and we still had plenty of room to move around.

            Klaude had been silent during all of this and I realized he was watching the dirt as well. When it all stopped, I turned to Ravenna. “Whatcha doin’?”

            She chuckled. “I’m setting charges from here to where I can feel the walls of the hold.”

            I nodded. Then I knit my brows together. “Wait, you can feel where the hold is…?”

            She didn’t turn around or anything and just kept tapping on different spots on the wall. “Mhm. Every time I touch something, it sends vibrations through that something. Think Daredevil. The difference being that instead of _seeing_ where the vibrations go, I can _feel_ them, so I can tell the difference between densities and different materials and stuff. I can also use that to scout out weak spots in structures and what have you. I’m essentially the world’s best one-woman demolition crew. And probably the world’s only one-woman demolition crew, but hey, it’s still pretty impressive.” I could hear the grin in her voice. “Mind you, normally, I wouldn’t be able to scout this far ahead. My powers just got jacked for some reason.” She put her palm against the wall and turned her head to look at me. She grinned. “I’m not complaining, though!” There was a huge series of small explosions going in a line through the ground. It was like a machine gun going off and the ground shook and it kept going for a good twenty seconds. Twenty seconds may not seem like much, but count out twenty seconds in your head. And then realize all I heard and felt for a full twenty seconds was repeated explosions and the vibrations from explosions, eespectively. Twenty seconds is a long damn time.

            Regardless of all the noise and shaking, though, the dirt wall in front of us seemed totally unfazed. “Uh, Ravenna?”

            She smiled again and lightly kicked a seemingly random spot on the wall. Then it just… fell. It just fell straight down and became loose dirt. The hole she made seemed to go on for quite a ways but it was still about half full with dirt. “See, Tanis? Never doubt me!”

            I rolled my eyes. “Well, there’s still the issue of the three-foot-high swamp of dirt you just created going all the way down the tunnel.”

            Ravenna just smirked. “I told you never to doubt me!” She waved her hand out, palm face-down, in the direction of the tunnel and an orange mist shot from her fingers like fire. It seeped into the dirt and all the dirt throughout the entire tunnel started to glow. It lit the whole tunnel up, too. And then, all the dirt started to compress and flatten out. It was like a hallway full of magma and it was all settling down to level out. And then the glow disappeared and all that was left was a hard, stone-like pathway. It reduced the three-foot-high mess of dirt into a half-foot step up onto a nice, solid path. Ravenna turned around in beamed at me.

            I laughed. “Alright, alright, you’re good. C’mon, let’s go.” I stepped up onto the impromptu road and started down the tunnel. Thankfully, it was still day-time in The Realm, and the sunlight lit the tunnel up for quite a ways. After I stepped in, Ravenna and Klaude followed me. A line of small cubes of compressed dirt followed them, and I grinned. It eventually got pretty dark, but we could still see enough to get by.

_Here’s to hoping the Shield-Bearers have a bunch of lights in there._

_Great, you jinxed it._

_Oh, shush._

            It took us about five minutes of walking in silence to come up on a dirt-encrusted stone wall that just started and ended at the edges of our tunnel. Ravenna walked up ahead of me and stood with her back to the wall, hands on her hips. “Alright, soldiers! You ready?” She smiled. Or at least, I assume she smiled. It was pretty hard to see at that point.

            I rolled my eyes, though she probably couldn’t see, either. “Before we go in…” I crossed my arms, something I find that I tend to do when I think. “Do we have any kind of strategy for dealing with resistance?” I turned to Ravenna. “I know how your summoning works, and you know mine well enough.” I turned to Klaude. “I know you’re useless except for in specific circumstances, and I’d prefer you didn’t know my summoning’s exact ins and outs but in case you were unaware, I can conjure things—living or not. How can we utilize our skills to work together?”

            We spent a few minutes, just sitting at the edge of the wall, thinking about some general kind of stuff we could pull off. Klaude, other than a pointed remark about not being useless, made no real contributions to the discussion. A single cube of compressed dirt, however, did float over to us and promptly explode into tiny spikes. The spikes all stopped long before they hit anything and then recombined back into a cube. So, basically, we had some super-awesome telekinesis in our back pockets, too. Of course, having the fucked up kind of mind that I do, and gaining some amount of inspiration from a particularly risqué anime I watched a few years back about a cat-girl with invisible arms or something, I came up with yet another awesome plan that would _definitely_ help to add on to my reputation as _Demon of the Rose_.

_Well, this should be fun._

_Even for you… this is dark._

_Yeah… but it’s more fun that way._


End file.
